Moss Grows on Trees Not Money - Capiche?

Sent to me by a fellow memo reader: "I hope to Hell that it didn't hold up their golf game."

My response: "A two 'putz game?" (See 1 below.)
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Up with Hayek down with Keynes if you want to avoid "The Road To Serfdom." (See 2 below.)

However, Lacking few options The Fed's Bernanke commits to going further down "The Road To Serfdom." (See 2a, 2b and 2c below.)
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True Conservatism and fiscal responsibility eventually allows Progressives to return to power among other reasons. Then after their touchy feely nonsense it is back to cold shower time.

Moss grows on trees not money - capiche? It also never hurts to ask whether something is affordable. There will always be a bottom if there is a top. The object is to pass policies that make it easier for those on the bottom to claw their way up the mountain and education and a vacation remain the best 'picks.'

Economic cycles are a part of life but overwhelming deficits, accumulated debt and heavy handed government intervention make recoveries more labored if not, as may now be the case, virtually impossible.(See 3 below.)
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A rational and thoughtful distinction between Islam and Islamism.

Western Civilization is at war with radicals who perpetrate their heinous crimes and assaults on civilized people in the name of Islam.

It is incumbent upon those who believe in justice and religious freedom to understand the distinction.

That said, it is also appropriate to point out that a Muslim Mosque's location can be insensitive and self-defeating.(See 4 below.)
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The Palestinians have been foot balled by their Arab brethren for decades and 'bleeding hearts' have bought into and funded this hypocrisy.

It has permitted Arab leaders to keep their 'streets' roiled, allowed the Arab World to win the propaganda war against Israel and to milk the West, through their oil clout and power in the U.N., of billions for refugee support.

As I often say, if you want more of something fund it.

Perhaps a modicum of change is afoot. If so very long overdue. (See 5 below.)
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If the Obama Administration continues to increase employment, as they are claiming, then, by 2012, when Obama runs against GW again everyone in the nation should be out of work. (See 6 below.)
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Sent to me by a Christian friend and fellow memo reader.

Obama may or may not have been Baptized but he is sure giving America a good dunking.

You decide. (See 7 below.)
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Dick
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1)"The Obama administration is looking to the Fed to do more to spur the recovery, since its own options are few, given the political paralysis in Congress as midterm elections approach. President Obama, vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard, discussed the economy for about 15 minutes with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York before the two men played golf."
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2)Spreading Hayek, Spurning Keynes: Professor Leads an Austrian Revival.
By KELLY EVANS

Peter J. Boettke, shuffling around in a maroon velour track suit or faux-leather rubber shoes he calls "dress Crocs," hardly seems like the type to lead a revolution.

Peter J. Boettke of George Mason University is the emerging standard bearer for a revived Austrian school of economics.

But the 50-year-old professor of economics at George Mason University in Virginia is emerging as the intellectual standard-bearer for the Austrian school of economics that opposes government intervention in markets and decries federal spending to prop up demand during times of crisis. Mr. Boettke, whose latest research explores people's ability to self-regulate, also is minting a new generation of disciples who are spreading the Austrian approach throughout academia, where it had long been left for dead.

To these free-market economists, government intrusion ultimately sows the seeds of the next crisis. It hampers what one famous Austrian, Joseph Schumpeter, called the process of "creative destruction."

Governments that spend money they don't have to cushion downturns, they say, lead nations down the path of large debts and runaway inflation.

Eight decades ago, in the midst of the Great Depression, the Austrian school and its leading scholar, Friedrich A. von Hayek, fell out of favor relative to the more activist theories of John Maynard Keynes. The British economist's ideas, which called for aggressive government spending during recessions, triumphed then and in the decades since, reflected most recently in measures like the $814 billion stimulus package. Austrian adherents were marginalized, losing influence in prominent journals and among policy makers.

But as the economy flounders, debt mounts and growth—revised downward Friday—flags, Mr. Hayek and his Austrian-school adherents like Mr. Boettke are resurgent as their views resonate with more people.

"What I'm really worried about is an endless cycle of deficits, debt, and debasement of currency," Mr. Boettke says. "What we've done is engage in a set of policies that's turned a market correction into an economy-wide crisis."

Mr. Boettke got hooked on economics as a student at Grove City College. His commitment to economics is "always on," says his wife.

Others seem to agree. Mr. Hayek's 1944 classic, "The Road to Serfdom," became the top-selling book in June on Amazon.com. The Austrian think tank Foundation for Economic Education had to turn students away this summer from its overflowing seminars.

Of course, economic theory ebbs and flows. The Austrian school surged along with inflation and unemployment in the 1970s. By the 1980s, free-market ideas ushered in the Reagan Revolution. But the success faded as inflation was successfully controlled by central bankers and government spending actually rose during the Reagan years. Besides, no one figure emerged as the leader of a fractious group of economists averse to central planning.

Mr. Boettke has come as close as anyone in recent years. In the last decade at George Mason, he has helped recruit the Austrian school's leading scholars and drawn students from around the world. Roughly 75% of his students have gone on to teach economics at the college or graduate level.

Mr. Boettke "has done more for Austrian economics, I'd say, than any individual in the last decade," says Bruce Caldwell, an editor of Mr. Hayek's collected works.

The resurgence of Austrian economics does have its hazards, Mr. Boettke says. The antigovernment fervor on cable-television shows and the Internet may have popularized its theories, but it also "reinforces the idea to critics that these are crackpot ideas," he said. He has tried to distance himself from conspiracy theorists and even dropped "Austrian" from the name of his blog. But he hasn't yet thought of a better term.

'Always On'
Still, Mr. Boettke isn't too concerned with matters of style. More folksy than formal, his commitment to economics, as his wife Rosemary says, is "always on."

He has a tendency to ramble, interrupt and use salty language. In between the dozen books and over 100 articles he has written, he spends hours debating with students around his backyard barbecue grill.

Often, when Mrs. Boettke needs him to run errands, he makes students pile in the car with him to finish the debate. He also has trouble closing down his inner economist.

"He refuses to recycle," Mrs. Boettke says. "Something about how it actually uses more resources." He's not exactly a handyman either. "If his 'opportunity cost' is too great, he'll hire someone."

Growing up in Clark, N.J., Mr. Boettke was a mediocre student in high school. His dreams of landing a basketball coaching job led him to Grove City College in Pennsylvania in 1979. A series of injuries ended that career, but an introductory economics course started another.

It was taught by the renowned Austrian economist Hans Sennholz, who explained why government policies resulted in gas shortages, forcing Mr. Boettke to siphon gas. "I was hooked."

Mr. Boettke went on to GMU because it was one of the few places that offered a Ph.D. program in Austrian economics. There, he focused his research on the organizational problems of the Soviet economy. It solidified his belief that any central planning of an economy, including by a central bank like the Federal Reserve, would damage the market.

Tenure Denied
In 1990, Mr. Boettke landed a job at New York University. "It was a dream come true," he says. Economics at NYU had legendary Austrian roots, but the school started to move toward a more standard mathematical approach, former colleagues say. Mr. Boettke was denied tenure in 1997, a blow to his personal ambitions.

The period also marked a low point for the Austrian field. Its philosophical approach looked old-fashioned amid the mathematical models dominating modern economics.

And the tenures of Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan at the Federal Reserve seemed to quell doubts about the central bank's ability to manage the U.S. economy.

But all along, the Austrians weren't so sure. Economics, they feared, was increasingly narrow and technical but not necessarily wise. They also remained skeptical of the Fed's approach to targeting stability in consumer prices.

That shouldn't be the Fed's goal, says Mr. Boettke, who a friend lured back to George Mason a year after he was denied tenure. The Fed, he says, should be to make money "as neutral as possible, like the rule of law, which never favors one party over the other."

That sometimes means letting prices fall. There's little to fear in deflation, he adds, when it accompanies periods of strong productivity growth. However, "anytime you saw the price level starting to fall, the Fed flooded the economy with cash," he says. "And that resulted in asset-price inflation, which set us up for these crises."

Back From Serfdom
It wasn't a lack of government oversight that led to the crisis, as some economists argue, but too much of it, Mr. Boettke says. Specifically, low interest rates and policies that subsidized homeownership "gave people the crazy juice," he says.

But as much as the Austrian diagnosis may resonate now, it doesn't provide a playbook for what to do next, which could limit its current resurgence.

Mr. Hayek rightly warned of the dangers of central planning, Mr. Boettke says, but "he didn't give a prescription for how to move from 'serfdom' back."

2a)Fed Ponders Bolder Moves: Bernanke Opens Door to Buying More Securities If Economy Falters Further.
By JON HILSENRATH And SUDEEP REDDY

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke opened the door to bolder steps by the central bank if the economy continues to falter, amid fresh signs that growth has fizzled in the past few months.

The remarks—the strongest signal yet that the Fed is ready to bolster growth—cheered investors, who bid up U.S. stocks.

Speaking Friday to world monetary policymakers gathered in Wyoming, he said "policy options are available to provide additional stimulus" to the U.S. economy, should it be necessary.

The latest sign of trouble for the economy came Friday as the Commerce Department revised down its estimate for second-quarter growth in gross domestic product. The economy grew only 1.6% in the period, not the 2.4% annual rate previously estimated.

Stumbling GDP growth adds to the gloom already created by plunging home sales and other signs that consumers are shying away from spending. Technology bellwether Intel Corp. warned Friday its third-quarter revenue could fall short of estimates because of weak demand for personal computers.

All of this drives home a grim political reality for the Obama administration and for Democrats facing elections this fall: What many had hoped would be a "summer of recovery" is ending on a dismal note.

"The pace of recovery in output and employment has slowed somewhat in recent months," Mr. Bernanke said in his speech in Wyoming, an annual event hosted by the Kansas City Fed. He made the case that growth will pick up in 2011, spurred in part by consumers who have shored up their damaged finances. However, he also made clear the Fed would respond if that forecast is wrong and growth continues to falter, and expressed confidence that its efforts would work.

Mr. Bernanke sketched out four options the Fed could deploy to boost the economy. At the top of the list is the resumption of a program of long-term securities purchases by the Fed, which could help to drive already-low long-term interest rates down even more. The Fed can't use its traditional lever of pushing short-term interest rates down because it has already pushed them to near zero.

Another option would be to lower the interest rate banks get for reserves they keep with the Fed, even though it's already quite low, Mr. Bernanke said. He also said the Fed could promise to keep short-term interest rates low for a longer period than markets currently expect. A final option, which Mr. Bernanke ruled out but which some private sector economists recommend, would be to raise the Fed's inflation target to more than 2%, from its current informal target of 1.5% to 2%, Mr. Bernanke said.

Investors were buoyed by the news. The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged 164.84 points, or 1.65%, to close at 10150.65.

Economists still put low odds on the economy falling back into recession, but they acknowledge that the likelihood has been rising. Double-dip recessions are rare in history, sometimes the result of policy mistakes—such as pulling back stimulus too quickly or aggressively, as happened in the U.S. in the 1930s and in Japan in the 1980s. The most recent case of an economic relapse in the U.S. was the 1981-82 recession, which followed the 1980 downturn.

Goldman Sachs has one of the most pessimistic outlooks for growth among Wall Street banks, but even it sees the economy growing 1.5% in the second half of this year and early 2011. Goldman economists put the likelihood of a double-dip recession at 25% to 30%, a substantial risk but still unlikely.

One of the biggest potential challenges is stagnation in hiring, or a return to declining payrolls—which would choke off momentum for the private sector to grow. "If the labor market starts to shrink again, it has effects on both workers' confidence and on their incomes and that tends to reinforce the downside," said Goldman Sachs economist Ed McKelvey.

Friday's GDP report showed a surge in imports, which grew at the fastest rate in 26 years, during the second quarter. Growth in imports far exceeded U.S. exports and wiped out more than three percentage points of U.S. growth in the quarter.

Many companies are socking away cash, rather than investing in new projects, in part to guard against risks they see emerging. Friday's GDP report showed for the first time that a key measure of after-tax corporate profits in the second quarter remained strong, rising 25% from a year earlier. But that represented only a 2.9% increase from the previous quarter, far slower than the gain in the first quarter.

"This is what business has been trying to tell policymakers all along—that confidence isn't high, uncertainty is great and there's a reluctance to take on risk," said Ronald DeFeo, chief executive of Terex Corp., a Westport, Conn.-based heavy equipment maker.

Mr. DeFeo, just back from Brazil, hasn't shifted back into cutback mode. "All we're doing," he says, "is trying to go those markets in the world where business and opportunity are better matched than in the U.S."

Richard Mershad, chief executive of Micro Electronics Inc., a computer retailer, said U.S. consumers remain extremely cautious in their spending.

The Hilliard, Ohio, company has avoided adding workers for the past three years, instead trying to raise productivity by automating more of its distribution to drive costs down. Mr. Mershad said he's "a little bit concerned about another dip" in the economy and plans to keep the company focused on cutting overhead expenses. "We have to do more with less," he said.

A similar sense of caution is entrenched in corporate board rooms across the U.S. and poses a major challenge for policymakers like Mr. Bernanke.

Mr. Bernanke's speech signaled that the Fed's position has shifted notably in the past few months. Early this year, officials spent much of their time planning an exit from easy money crisis policies, and unwound several of their emergency lending programs. Now, if the Fed takes any action, an easing of policy looks more likely than any tightening.

Fed officials disagree on whether more action is needed and whether the steps the Fed chairman outlined would be effective. The consensus-driven Fed chief is weighing the arguments among the dozen regional Fed bank chiefs and the four other Fed board members who have a say in Fed policy as he assesses whether to do more.

"None of the (Fed's options) would move the needle significantly on either the economy or the risk of deflation," Harvard professor Martin Feldstein said after the Fed chairman's speech. Interest rates are already very low, he noted, but that has not generated much consumer or investment demand. "He's in a bad spot."

Inflation trends weigh heavily on Mr. Bernanke's mind. The threat of a Japan-like period of falling consumer prices looms. Though Fed officials don't believe deflation is likely to happen, Mr. Bernanke made clear his tolerance was running low for further declines in inflation, which is already low, at 1%, and below the Fed's informal objective of 1.5% to 2%.

2b)The 1.6% Recovery: The results of the Obama economic experiment are coming in.

To no one's surprise except perhaps Vice President Joe Biden's, second quarter economic growth was revised down yesterday to 1.6% from the prior estimate of 2.4%, which was down from first quarter growth of 3.7%, which was down from the 2009 fourth quarter's 5%. Economic recoveries are supposed to go in the other direction.

The downward revision was anticipated given the poor early economic reports for the third quarter, including a plunge in new home sales, mediocre manufacturing data, volatile jobless claims and even (after a healthy period) weaker corporate profits. Many economists fear that third quarter growth could be negative. Even if the economy avoids a double-dip recession, the current pace of growth is too sluggish to create many new jobs or improve middle-class living standards.

As recently as August 3, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner took to our competitor's pages to declare that this couldn't happen. "Welcome to the Recovery," he wrote, describing how the $862 billion government stimulus was still rolling out, business investment was booming, and the economy was poised for sustainable growth.

We all make mistakes, but the problem for the American people is that Mr. Geithner's blunder is conceptual. He and President Obama and their economic coterie really believe that government spending can stimulate growth by triggering private "demand," that tax rates are irrelevant to investment decisions, that waves of new regulation can be absorbed by business with little impact on costs or hiring, and that politicians can assail capitalists without having any effect on the movement of capital.

This has been the great Washington policy experiment of the last three years, and it isn't turning out too well. If prosperity were a function of government stimulus, our economy should be booming. The Fed has kept interest rates at near-zero for nearly two years, while Congress has flooded the economy with trillions of dollars in spending, loan guarantees, $8,000 tax credits for housing, "cash for clunkers," and so much more. Never before has government tried to do so much and achieved so little.

Now that the failure is becoming obvious, the liberal explanation is that things would have been worse without all of this government care and feeding. The same economists who recommended the stimulus are now producing studies, based on their Keynesian demand models, claiming that it "saved or created" millions of jobs, even as the overall economy has lost millions of jobs. The counterfactual is impossible to disprove, but the American people can see the reality with their own eyes.

The nearby table compares growth in the current recovery with the recovery following the recession of 1981-82, the last time the jobless rate exceeded 10%. The contrast is stark.

Then after three quarters the recovery was in high gear. Now it is decelerating. Then tax rates were falling, interest rates were coming down and the regulatory state was in retreat. Now taxes are poised to rise sharply, interest rates can't get any lower, and federal agencies are hassling business at every turn. Then business investment was exploding. Now companies are sitting on something like $2 trillion, reluctant to take risks when they don't know what new costs government might next impose on them.

To borrow a phrase, maybe it's time for a change.

2c)Economist Shiller Sees Potential for 'Double Dip' Recession .
By SIMON CONSTABLE

With the U.S. economic recovery losing steam, the chances of a second phase of a slowdown are increasing, according to a leading economist.

Speaking in The Wall Street Journal's The Big Interview show, Robert Shiller, professor of economics at Yale University, said he thought the second dip down of a so-called double-dip recession "may be imminent."

Earlier this month, he told the Wall Street Journal he thought the chance of a double-dip recession, which he noted is a rare event, was greater than 50%.

Mr. Shiller now suspects that when the National Bureau of Economic Research eventually looks back at the data, the third quarter of 2010 might mark the beginning of the second dip of the recession.

In another indication of a faltering economy, the government estimate of second-quarter growth in gross domestic product was revised downward Friday.

Mr. Shiller also said he thinks the U.S. economy is "teetering on the brink of deflation." Deflation occurs when the general level of consumer prices falls, as was the case in the Great Depression. He said the U.S. is ill-prepared for such an event because of the lack of "indexing" in contracts.

Deflation is generally considered to be a worse problem for an economy than moderate inflation. The Federal Reserve has been adopting measures to add liquidity into the economy and stave off the danger of deflation.

In addition, the co-creator of the Case-Shiller Home Price Index said he is worried that housing prices could decline for another five years. He noted that Japan saw land prices decline for 15 consecutive years up to 2006. Data released earlier this week show the housing sector is performing at the worst level in decades.

Mr. Shiller said the biggest problem for the economy and the national psyche currently is unemployment, and he called on the federal government and local government to create jobs. Specifically, he suggested that schools employ an additional person in each class room as a teacher's aide. Not only would it employ millions, he said, but it would be good for the children. He said students would enjoy the extra attention of another person.

When asked about how to stimulate the private sector to create jobs, he noted that there was such uncertainty in the economy currently that businesses were backing off from making hiring decisions. At least part of that uncertainty is being caused by the lack of clarity over what part, if any, of the Bush-era tax cuts would be extended in 2011.

Mr. Shiller is also known as an expert on bubbles, having studied the technology-stock boom and bust, as well as the housing disaster. He said he doesn't think the bond market is in a bubble.
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3)The Death of Conservatism Was Greatly Exaggerated

In 2008 liberals proclaimed the collapse of Reaganism. Two years later the idea of limited government is back in vogue
By PETER BERKOWITZ

Last August left little doubt that a conservative revival was underway. Constituents packed town-hall meetings across the country to confront Democratic House members and senators ill-prepared to explain why, in the teeth of a historic economic downturn and nearly 10% employment, President Obama and his party were pressing ahead with costly health-care legislation instead of reining in spending, cutting the deficit and spurring economic growth.

Still, whether that revival would have staying power was very much open to question. A year later—and notwithstanding the Democrats' steadily declining poll numbers and the mounting electoral momentum that could well produce a Republican majority in the House and a substantial swing in the Senate—it still is.

Sustaining the revival depends on the ability of GOP leaders, office-holders and candidates to harness the extraordinary upsurge of popular opposition to Mr. Obama's aggressive progressivism. Our constitutional tradition provides enduring principles that should guide them.

In late 2008 and early 2009, in the wake of Mr. Obama's meteoric ascent, the idea that conservatism would enjoy any sort of revival in the summer of 2009 would have seemed to demoralized conservatives too much to hope for. To leading lights on the left, it would have appeared absolutely outlandish.

In late October 2008, New Yorker staff writer George Packer reported "the complete collapse of the four-decade project that brought conservatism to power in America." Two weeks later, the day after Mr. Obama's election, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne proclaimed "the end of a conservative era" that had begun with the rise of Ronald Reagan.

And in February 2009, New York Times Book Review and Week in Review editor Sam Tanenhaus, writing in The New Republic, declared that "movement conservatism is exhausted and quite possibly dead." Mr. Tanenhaus even purported to discern in the new president "the emergence of a president who seems more thoroughly steeped in the principles of Burkean conservatism than any significant thinker or political figure on the right."

Messrs. Packer, Dionne and Tanenhaus underestimated what the conservative tradition rightly emphasizes, which is the high degree of unpredictability in human affairs. They also conflated the flagging fortunes of George W. Bush's Republican Party with conservatism's popular appeal. Most importantly, they failed to grasp the imperatives that flow from conservative principles in America, and the full range of tasks connected to preserving freedom.

Progressives like to believe that conservatism's task is exclusively negative—resisting the centralizing and expansionist tendency of democratic government. And that is a large part of the conservative mission. Progressives see nothing in this but hard-hearted indifference to inequality and misfortune, but that is a misreading.

What conservatism does is ask the question avoided by progressive promises: at what expense? In the aftermath of the global economic crisis of 2008, Western liberal democracies have been increasingly forced to come to grips with their propensity to live beyond their means.

It is always the task for conservatives to insist that money does not grow on trees, that government programs must be paid for, and that promising unaffordable benefits is reckless, unjust and a long-term threat to maintaining free institutions.

But conservatives also combat government expansion and centralization because it can undermine the virtues upon which a free society depends. Big government tends to crowd out self-government—producing sluggish, selfish and small-minded citizens, depriving individuals of opportunities to manage their private lives and discouraging them from cooperating with fellow citizens to govern their neighborhoods, towns, cities and states.

Progressives are not the only ones to misunderstand the multiple dimensions of the conservative mission. Conservatives have demonstrated blind spots, too.

In 2010—in an America in which the New Deal long ago was woven into the fabric of our lives—conservatives can not reasonably devote themselves exclusively to limiting the growth of government. Government must effectively discharge the responsibilities it has had since the founding of the republic, but also those it has acquired over more than two centuries of social, political and technological change.

Those responsibilities include putting people to work and reigniting the economy—and devising alternatives to ObamaCare that will enable the federal government to cooperate with state governments and the private sector to provide affordable and decent health care.

A thoughtful conservatism in America—a prerequisite of a sustainable conservatism—must also recognize that the liberty, democracy and free markets that it seeks to conserve have destabilizing effects. For all their blessings, they breed distrust of order, virtue and tradition, all of which must be cultivated if liberty is to be well-used.

To observe this is not, as some clever progressives think, to have discovered a fatal contradiction at the heart of modern conservatism. It is, rather, to begin to recognize the complexity of the conservative task in a free society.

To be sure, the current conservative revival was not in the first instance inspired by reflection on conservative principles.

The credit for galvanizing ordinary people and placing individual freedom and limited government back on the national agenda principally belongs to President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Their heedless pursuit of progressive transformation reinvigorated a moribund conservative spirit, just as in 1993 and 1994 the Clintons' overreaching on health care sparked a popular uprising resulting in a Republican takeover of Congress.

The Gingrich revolution fizzled, in part because congressional Republicans mistook a popular mandate for moderation as a license to undertake radical change, and in part because they grew complacent and corrupt in the corridors of power.

Perhaps this time will be different. Our holiday from history is over. The country faces threats—crippling government expansion at home and transnational Islamic extremism—that arouse conservative instincts and concentrate the conservative mind.

Mr. Berkowitz is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
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4)Islamism Is Not Islam
The furor over the inaccurately dubbed 'Ground Zero Mosque' has done nothing but reinforce al Qaeda propaganda. .ArticleComments (95)more in Opinion ».EmailPrintSave This ↓ More.
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If Islamism came to conquer New York and built an emperor's palace at Ground Zero, I would be worried. But Islamism is not Islam.

Islam is a faith. Like all other faiths it has a vibrant array of progressives, conservatives and everything in between fighting over which interpretation suits current times. In this regard, Islam is nothing exceptional.

Islamism, on the other hand, is the desire to impose any one of these interpretations over everyone else through state law.

Many commentators confuse traditionalist Muslims with Islamists. Like the Amish, Muslim traditionalists usually have few political ambitions. Their real cause is debating theology with their adversary, the Muslim modernist. Islamists, however, are not interested in the raging feud between traditionalists and modernists.

Hence, Islam is the religion and Islamism the ideological project using this religion to justify total state power. It was only after losing the fight for total state power against democracies and dictatorships alike in the Middle East that Islamists launched their war against the West. And it is Islamism, not the pluralistic faith of Islam, that struck at the twin towers.

The distinction between Islam and Islamism is not just theological. If it were, one could forgive anti-Islam pundits for confusing the two when blaming Islam itself for the woes that extremists have sought to reap upon America and the world. But this distinction can be discovered regardless of theology, through the social sciences.

For instance, Muslims throughout history rarely codified any version of the Islamic religious code, or Shariah, as state law. The result was a Muslim history full of religious societies with very temporal and often debauched ruling dynasties. Indeed, these dynasties launched religiously justified wars, against themselves and others. But was that not the practice of all medieval kings seeking material glory while promising spiritual salvation to their men? The simple fact is that, as with all medieval states, religion was but a political convenience.

Breaking with this tradition, Islamism emerged as an entirely modern social-engineering project, designed initially to resist colonialism. Islamists' focus on controlling the "state," adopting an "Islamic constitution," and codifying and implementing "Islamic law" were all borne of ideas that grew out of the European nation-state. The terms state, constitution and law are not referred to at all in the Quran. It mattered little to Islamists, bent on rejecting all that was Western, that their entire debate took place within an exclusively European political paradigm.

In Muslim-majority societies that hold elections today, parties wanting to "rule in God's name" have been roundly defeated time and again by their fellow Muslims. Take two of the world's most populous Muslim-majority countries, Indonesia and Bangladesh. In recent years, the electorates of both these countries have decisively rejected Islamism in favor of secular, democratic values. In the Arab-speaking world, the situation is similar. For the last 20 years, whether seeking power through the gun or the ballot-box, Islamists have failed. Fortunately, Islamists do not speak on behalf of Islam.

Unfortunately, this message has not been heard enough in the West, leading many Americans to believe that all Muslims are closet Islamists, hell-bent on global domination. For this reason, the Islamic center in New York has been transformed in the minds of many into a symbol of Islam's conquest of America. So far the furor over the inaccurately dubbed "Ground Zero Mosque" has achieved nothing but reinforce al Qaeda propaganda that the West is at war with Islam.

This controversy also shows the limitations of Samuel Huntington's theory of the "Clash of Civilizations." Huntington's claim that Muslims form a distinct anti-secular civilization that is on a collision path with the West is insulting, and must be music to the ears of Osama bin Laden. It is also inaccurate. Without the legacy of medieval Muslim Spain, the political foundations of modern Europe would look very different today.

It is time to revise this aging and divisive theory that pits Muslims against non-Muslims. If there is a clash of civilizations it is, as election results show, between democratic and pluralistic peoples the world over and those who wish to forcibly impose their ideas on others in the quest to construct an artificial model of social perfection that only exists in their minds. This clash is not religion-based, but ideological.

Throughout history—and indeed today—Muslims have repeatedly rejected the al Qaeda message of enforcing one view of Islam over all society. Islam is no more resistant to peace than any other religion is. All religious faiths have a propensity for good. They should be defined by the way in which the vast majority of their followers profess them.

Mr. Nawaz is co-founder of the counterextremism think tank Quilliam and founder of the Khudi movement, which works to promote a democratic culture in Pakistan.
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5)A Palestinian Victory
The Arab world's dirty secret

As Israelis and Palestinians prepare to visit Washington next week to begin direct peace talks, it's worth recalling what refugees the Palestinians are—in Arab countries.

Last week, Lebanon's parliament amended a clause in a 1946 law that had been used to bar the 400,000 Palestinians living in the country from taking any but the most menial jobs. "I was born in Lebanon and I have never known Palestine," the AP quoted one 45-year-old Palestinian who works as a cab driver. "We want to live like Lebanese. We are human beings and we need civil rights."

The dirty little secret of the Arab world is that it has consistently treated Palestinians living in its midst with contempt and often violence. In 1970, Jordan expelled thousands of Palestinian militants after Yasser Arafat attempted a coup against King Hussein. In 1991, Kuwait expelled some 400,000 Palestinians working in the country as punishment for Arafat's support for Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War.

For six decades, Palestinians have been forced by Arab governments to live in often squalid conditions so that they could serve as propaganda tools against Israel, even as millions of refugees elsewhere have been repatriated and absorbed by their host countries. This month's vote still falls short of giving Palestinian Lebanese the rights they deserve, including citizenship. But it's a reminder of the cynicism of so much Arab pro-Palestinian propaganda, and the credulity of those who fall for it.
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6)Whereare The Jobs?

They are being hijacked by the Washington bureaucrats!!!

A Few Facts:

Stimulus Bill

Another bill rushed through Congress and signed in February, 2009. A year and a half later, a significant portion of the monies remain unspent. Some estimate as
high as 1/3 of a trillion dollars yet Congress is talking more stimulus spending.

The current bill was to help keep unemployment around 8%. It is now 9.5%. Many
estimate the true number is 10% plus. In short,

IT IS NOT WORKING!

Suggested action:

Cancel the balance of the unspent portion of the bill

Cancel FICA collections for the employee and employerfor the balance of 2010 and all of 2011.

THAT’S A STIMULUS!!!

Energy Policy

We continue to pour money into “green jobs.” The bitter truth is windmills and solar panels are not cost effective! They require mandates and subsidies to exist.
Check with Spain and see how well it is working overthere. A cost disaster.

Suggested action:

A true energy policy would be to convert the truckingindustry to natural gas; a cleaner fuel which we have inabundance. This would reduce our oil needs by 30% and
create thousands of jobs across the nation!

Offshore Drilling Moratorium

The drilling ban is costing thousands of jobs and castinggloom and anxiety over the oil industry.

Suggested action:

Cancel the ban NOW!! Open up drilling in ANWR and other select areas.

Tax Policy

The people and industry are frozen into anxiety and lackof confidence over tax speculation. Only an idiot wouldincrease taxes during a recession. However, that is whatWashington is threatening!

Suggested action:

Congress should extend the current tax structure for
everyone through 2011 at a minimum. Permit industry to bring overseas profits (that they have already paid local country taxes on) back to the USA without adding the USA tax. This would provide more money for expansion and capital spending.

Summary

Most of our problems are “SELF INFLICTED!”

We add and/or create our problems via stupid government decisions. We have too many special interest groups in Washington dictating government policy.

This must stop…NOW!!
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7)Censoring Questions about Obama's Religion .
By Cliff Kincaid

In a major liberal initiative to curtail discussion of President Obama's religious identity, over 70 Christian leaders and denominational heads have signed a letter saying that questions about the religious philosophy of the President of the United States should be ignored and suppressed by the major media.

The letter demands that the media "offer no further support or airtime to those who misrepresent and call into question the President's Christian faith."

The apparent initiator of the letter is Obama associate Jim Wallis of the Sojourners group, a group funded by atheist George Soros.

The Eleison Group, which represents the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Wallis's Sojourners group, arranged the release of the letter and has handled publicity for it. The Eleison Group's purpose is to mobilize "more traditional progressive 'base' faith voters who are often overlooked in Democratic and progressive outreach."

The president of the Eleison Group, Burns Strider, has served as an adviser to Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and regional Communications Director for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Pelosi, a liberal Catholic, invoked St. Joseph, revered for being the foster father of Jesus and the husband of the Virgin Mary, in the successful push for passage of Obama's socialized medicine plan.

The "airtime" alluded to in the letter has mostly been devoted to the controversy over opinion polls finding that significant numbers of people are confused about Obama's religious identity and that some believe he is a Muslim.

The questions that have been offered by Accuracy in Media concern Obama's claims about being baptized in the Christian faith. AIM believes that politicians should be held accountable for the claims they make about themselves, even on personal matters of religious faith.

Obama's aides have claimed the President is a committed and practicing Christian and that he was baptized in Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ. But he has gone to church only a few times since he became President.

"We understand that these are contentious times," say the Christian leaders, "but the personal faith of our leaders should not be up for public debate."

However, the First Amendment expressly permits not only freedom of religion but freedom of the press.

The Christian leaders say, "We believe that questioning, and especially misrepresenting, the faith of a confessing believer goes too far." They do not identify who has misrepresented Obama's faith.

But other releases from the Eleison Group attack Fox News, talk radio, and "right-wing misinformation" about Obama's religious affiliation and views.

Strider and his associate, Eric Sapp, write, "The 4th Estate and reporters and editors who care about the truth need to wake up to what is happening. Bloggers and independent journalists need to rise up and demand accountability (even of those on our side). And all Americans need to hold our news organizations accountable."

AIM also wants accountability. What AIM has done is quote directly from Obama's books about his spiritual and political journey. We have pointed out that Obama's claim about his own baptism, as reported in his second memoir, The Audacity of Hope, is subject to interpretation because of the lack of detail about how and when he was baptized and by whom. It appears, based on information provided by Obama's own church, that Obama was describing how he became a member of that church.

Obama's claim of being baptized is presented in the context of discussing the fact that he was not born and baptized a Christian. He describes his Muslim father and grandfather and attendance in a Muslim school as he was growing up. Obama acknowledges that, before he joined Wright's church, some people regarded him as a Muslim. Wright himself dabbled in Islam before establishing his church, Obama concedes.

The proof of the baptism claim is precisely what is lacking in his book. There is no need or demand for a baptismal certificate, but there is no detail about the ceremony, other than talking about a walk down an aisle and a profession of faith, and no information about who performed the baptism and who attended. Traditionally, water is used in such a ceremony. There is no reference to water in Obama's book.

To add further to the mystery, AIM cited evidence that Christian baptisms were not required to join Wright's church, which emphasized liberation theology, and that Muslims were permitted to join and not disavow their faith.

"This is not a political issue," say the Christian leaders. "The signers of this letter come from different political and ideological backgrounds, but we are unified in our belief in Jesus Christ. As Christian pastors and leaders, we believe that fellow Christians need to be an encouragement to those who call Christ their savior, not question the veracity of their faith."

However, what is being questioned in not his faith but the veracity of his claim in his book, published as he was preparing his presidential run, that he underwent a baptism. Was this claim inserted into the book to make Obama more politically palatable to the American electorate who would be naturally suspicious about what the media called his "unorthodox" religious background?

Some Christians claim that baptism is not required to become a Christian. Obama could have claimed that he became a Christian in Wright's church through a simple profession of faith and that a formal baptism was not required. Instead, however, he claimed to have undergone the procedure.

The questions are legitimate because Obama does not have a pristine track record of being open and honest about his background and associates.

For example, in his previous book, Dreams from My Father, he misrepresented the identity of his childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, named in his book only as "Frank." This individual, who had a major impact on Obama before he went off to college, turned out to be Frank Marshall Davis, a Communist Party member with a 600-page FBI file.

Claims about a baptism cannot be taken at face value, especially because his statements and actions as President have led so many to believe he has a pro-Muslim bent. These have led to the perceptions, captured in the public opinion polls, that Obama may not be a Christian.

The controversy will not go away just because a few religious leaders demand that the media stop covering it.
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Source: http://dick-meom.blogspot.com/2010/08/sent-to-me-by-fellow-memo-reader-i-hope.html