Dangerous information that Tbilisi offers refuge and sanctuary to the Ingushetia/Chechnya network that links to the Black Widow terror bombers around the Kremlin. Putin boasts of revenge. The Kremlin is exercised to hysteria that Washington offers support and morale to Saakashvili at Tblisi. Joe Biden directly connects to Tblisi and has since August 2008. Biden owes his choice as VPOTUS to his dash to Tblisi those weeks before Candidate Obama chose Biden. This furious tension underlines the Kremlin disdain for the Obma administration. There will be blood.

Spoke Daniel Newhauser, Roll Call, re the threats against Eric Cantor by the Philadelphia YouTube devotee Norman Leboon, 38, a Philadelphia resident, who manufactured 2,000 videos over the years to broadcast his opinions.  Did Leboon fire the bullet that was found in Eric Cantor's Richmond office on Tuesday 23 March?  Unknown.  Did LeBoon know of the bullet before or after he made the video that threatens Cantor and mentions a bullet on Saturday 27?  Unknown.  What is certain is that Leboon's threats included a dislike of the 1995 hit movie Babe.  Leboon is not credible as a citizen.  It is peculiar to consider that this is genuine.  Leboon is under arrest by the FBI.  We can presume there will be laughter as they deal with his testimony to the court.  Did Leboon say, "I am the Messiah..."?

The articulate and pleasantly passionate and photogenic Devin Nunes (CA-21 R) lends a mighty assist to the FNC package on an undiscovered policy IED in the new healthcare genius act -- a new payroll deduction for long-term care that is transparently a tax grab from the young in order to create a revenue river for miscellaneous expenses, such as the budget. The "opt out" clause is a creative way of avoiding calling it a new payroll tax for every human being. Still, the burden falls on the payroll department at private enterprises to provide the automatic cash to the Feds or the manual declines to ward off the Feds -- guaranteeing that a lot of cash will now fall to the Feds just because folk will miss the point or assume something benevolent is attached.  It is a mini-me Social Security tax.  Devin Nunes is straightforward in identifying the Democratic cunning. Obamacare is careless. Whenever pols start talking policy, lock the cashbox. We have entered the dangerous ground of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, 1854, when a majority of the people refuse to accept the law of the land. All of the people, all of the time, will have their Election Day.

No hesitation to measure Sarah Palin to be the uncontested superstar politician of the GOP. Who can match her lilting alto-soprano when she says, "...common sense conservative principles that made this country the greatest country..."?   Is she already running hard for the nomination in 2012? Yes.  Staging a Tea Party rally at Harry Reid's Hole-in-the-Road -Searchlight, Nevada - is the sort of inspired lark that makes politics into grand ol' opry.  Note that SarahPAC is putting money into the critical Ohio CDs of 1, 2, 15, matching RomneyPAC. In Ohio, ex-Republican Congressman John Kasich, late of FNC and Lehman's, is running comfortably ahead of the paper bag-wearing Governor Rod Strickland.  In Pennsylvania, the GOP candidates for governor and senator, as well as a preponderance of the legislature candidates, are running comfortably ahead of the Democrats.  Indiana is leaning solid red again.  Those three states are certain foundations for not only the Republican nomination but also the Electoral College.  Puzzle is why the Democratic flacks continue to snipe at Sarah Palin as if she can be stopped with mockery that suits only the Democratic partisans.  Give Obama every Democratic vote, and he cannot win the Electoral College unless he can bring along the independents he won in 2008 in the South, the Midwest and the West.  Can Sarah Palin win the South and West?  Certain.  Can she win Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Indiana?  Unknown at this time, and right up until Election Day.  But the state apparatus in the hands of Republican governors from Harrisburg to Columbus to Indianapolis is a strong beginning.

 

Sarah Palin is a major force int he GOP for the next two decades, and her campaigning for McCain makes his re-election much more likely in the face of the strong challenge by the media star and defeated pol J.D. Hayworth. For the presidential cycles of  '12-'32, Sarah Palin will propose and dispose of money, candidates and opinions.  The success of Mrs. Cash will be measured by money raised, not elections won.   She is a donor machine for the 21st century, a perpetual PAC.  Nixon had this talent after '52.  National politics is not about issues. It is about dollars.

Speaking Ahmed Ali on Sunday 28 re the reversal of fortune in Baghdad as Allawi and the Sunni confederacy take the most seats in the new, fragmented Iraqi Parliament. The challenge remains to form a government with the the small parties and the Kurds, because Allawi cannot work with Maliki's Shia-dominated elite.  Allawi's previous regime was associated with massive graft and inside-dealing.  The Shia factions are not idle.  How does Iran play its cards?  In any event, the Obama administration is headed for the exits.  Within the year, Baghdad will be embraced by the Arab League again, and we can expect the usual agitprop soon enough.  Is Allawi strong enough to manage the Maliki forces?  No.

Spoke to Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents, re the White House meeting Tuesday 23, and learned that there is no trust and no communication between POTUS and PM Netanyahu. Relations between the Obama administration and Jerusalem are now at a new bottom. The most recent disagreement centers on the phony reporting of Israeli apartment-building in Jerusalem in long well-established neighborhoods.  POTUS has chosen to make noise about the dispute; POTUS himself chose the word "condemn" for the US spokesmen who have commented so far.  A larger and more dangerous issue is Tehran, the neighborhood predator.  POTUS chooses to soften sanctions and continue a futile embassy toward Tehran.  Netanyahu is exasperated with the POTUS gaming of diplomacy.  Mention that my information that the foreign policy of the Obama administration is entirely POTUS, a one-man State Department.  None of this is positive.  Marker in the road to a monument troubles.

 

Spoke Leslie Hook, WSJA, and Gordon Chang, Forbes, re the Google shut-down on Mainland China. Critical detail is that Google shifts its search to Google in Hong Kong, and the unanswered question is if this game will survive the mandarin bully boys of Beijing. Sergey Brin emerges as the stand-up guy in the billionaire clan for the century, and presuming Brin will easily outlive the other billionaires, his voice will obtain results. Brin is well ahead of POTUS and the reluctant, even shy, Obama administration with regard Red China falsehoods and non-transparency. Fear of history (the mandarins fear the number 1989) is a telling fact for crumbling confidence by a regime. Beijing fears its own history, and now fears companies that report its history. Brin is an op and a pol and speaks the speak of smart trade. Only detail preventing him from the presidency is that he is Russian-born. Will we find a workaround?

Spoke Dan Kruger, Bloomberg, to learn that corporate bonds are more desirable and trusted than US Treasurys, and much more sought-after. An IMF deputy managing director asserts that the G7 will exceed 100% of debt to GDP by 2014. The printing presses, the stimulus packages, the profligate spending and promising, the fragile trade markets, all add up to deficits and doubts that extend without certain end.  Warren Buffett and his Burlington Northern rolling stock is a better buy than the Treasury, which  in the next year will issue more than twice the amount of debt as will all corporates combined. The one reason given for not lowering ratings on sovereign debt is the unlimited power of governments to raise taxes and cut spending -- or simply to raise taxes the more.  But the US is losing its AAA stature even without the downgrade.  Buy the hot Buffett.

Spoke John Bolton Sunday 21 to learn that the Obama administration has exhausted its excuses for stalling with the Tehran nuke threat and will henceforth just repeat the same old explanations without an update. Israel is frustrated but resolved to endure the Obama administration's insults and disdain. The PA is not more than a pretense for POTUS to assert he is searching for peace. Tehran is an existential threat to Israel. There will be blood. Spoke David Albright, author "Peddling Peril," re the proliferation chain of nukes, miniaturized nuke warheads and ballistic missiles over the last 25 years -- chiefly from Pakistan, China and North Korea to clients Iran and Syria. The road ahead is treachery.  POTUS is not credible on the scale of the threat.  Reports that POTUS is deaf to all advice.  From Israel, only the PM gets an audience with POTUS.   POTUS maintains the fiction that appealing to Tehran and chastising Jerusalem is a fresh American initiative.   War warning.

Rumor about POTUS that Bart Gordon of Tennessee, head of House Space, was offered NASA in payment for his Yes vote. Gorton is retiring in January. Gordon is at the center of the revolt by NASA at Houston and Hunstville against the Obama administration mandate that Constellation is cancelled.  Look to speak with Bob Zimmerman on Sunday 21 re the rumor.  Gordon is wrecked unless he can name who is smearing him.  If not, then Gordon is weakened as NASA moves into guerrilla fighting for Constellation.  The healthcare fiasco now provides a sub-plot for the 2020 moon colony abandoned by POTUS.

Jerry Brown is the presumptive Democratic candidate for governor in California, and it is a measure of the disrepair of California that the best the master chef the party can find is a septuagenarian crank from Oakland. Brown represents the past and has not been in the economy or the game for many decades. The last he had weight was the 1980 presidential contest, when he tried to challenge Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy.  Brown is no more than Carter or Kennedy. His notion of political discourse is to make assertions about management. Meg Whitman is overwhelming Brown with her media, her campaign and her cash. It is not a competition. Brown is like a home-run hitter who tries for a come-back. Can't get the bat speed for the smoke, can't lay off the high hard one, can't see the breaking ball, can't run or field; but he can tell stories about the old days when he was young. What is more foolish than a man who won't get off the diamond and into the bleachers?

Spoke Ana Campoy, WSJ, to learn that the beta of the virtual fence that is to be built for 2,000 miles from Texas to California is in serious need of a rethink.  Built by Boeing for 28 miles, the fence fails tests because of rain, heat, wind and small animals.  It is not a fence; it is a series of watchtowers attached to propane tanks for fuelling the gear.  The fixes of the system cannot keep up with the failures.  Build it and they will come has turned into build it, and they will laugh.  Try a canal next time.  Oh.  The RIo Grande?  Hilarious fence.  If only there weren't rain, heat, wind and rabbits in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California.  

 AQ Puzzle.  

The Obama administration has picked a contrived diplomatic fight with Bibi Netanyahu over the last week, and it is sad and inevitable that this mistake turn into a nightmare in Israel.  The ever-opportunistic PA launches its arranged mobs of rock-throwing unemployed goons (on PA salaries).  Spoke Bret Stephens, WSJ, who underlined that this split between Washington and Jerusalem is a concoction of White House ops looking for yet more concessions from Israel prior to the border negotiations with the PA.  Aaron Klein, WABC, reports this PA-hired and cynical Third Intifada will spread throughout the country on Day 2, and perhaps longer, as the PA and its Fatah find advantage in the provocations.  The Obama administration is unbalanced and reckless.  My sources point to dumbfounded outrage from the POTUS supporters in the American Jewish voting bloc.

Jason Altmire (PA-4) speaks out against "deem and pass," in a fresh pushback on the healthcare vote. Altmire is under attack by MoveOn.org (above) and seeks a way to resist by quibbling on the Constitution and the Slaughter option. This is a dynamic firefight just beginning.  Salena Zito, Pittsburgh Trib-Review, says that Altmire knows that a Yes vote may doom him, and that a No vote secures the 4th CD.  Altmire wants to vote No.  Altmire has a large future in Democratic Pennsylvania, and is a vulnerable seat to the wave that's building.  Dem Whip Clyburn has an armlock on Altmire with his union whispers. Slaughter may have helped. Speaking Thaddeus McCotter Tuesday 16 re the House Republican leadership pushback on the Slaughter option, to provide air cover for the Altmire crowd. The Court awaits with those five conservative votes against gaming the system.

Spoke to Eric Shawn, FNC, on Sunday 14, re Jihad Jane ("Fatima LaRose") and her kindred of Cain, and I treated them as dangerous cranks who are seeking a single act of violence to vindicate their ineffective lives. Mentioned that Mohammed Atta was a crank who routinely ate from a plate of mashed potatoes that he kept in the fridge with a fork stuck in the leftovers -- and yet his peculiar personality did not prevent him from accomplishing 9/11.  I regarded the U.S. Attorney in Philadelphia, Michael Levy, as well as the Irish police to be successful, and I disdained the crew of suspects in Ireland - an Algerian, a Libyan, a Bosnian, a Palestinian - as "a Star Wars pub."  Asked of Adam Gadahn, the AQ spokesman, I mentioned that his real name is Adam Pearlman: "He's a punk.  We'll kill him."

Speaking to Eric Shawn, FNC, on Sunday morning 14, re Jihad Jane of Philadelphia and her companion Jihad Jamie of Colorado, who has now been released in Ireland. It is tempting to treat these American recruits as facile: two lonely women looking for purpose and security falling under the spell of seductive ops. My information is that the recruitment is not possible unless the jihadist makes a decision that the life of a martyr is superior to the life of a drifter or screw-up. No recruit is minor; no recruit is an accident.  This is witting and self-satisfying conduct.  Once upon a time, Khalid Sheik Mohammed was a lowly engineering student in a mostly Black agricultural school in North Carolina. Awliki in Yemen was an engineering student in Colorado.  A. Q. Khan was a charming, hard-working husband and father, working in dual-use technology in the Netherlands in the 1970s.  The infamous all began as one-off volunteers.  Opportunity and perseverance changed their fates.  Adam Ghadan, real name Adam Pearlman, writes copy for Bin Laden in Wazisirstan; the life of an Orange County teenager transformed into Tokyo Rose and Lord Haw-Haw (below).  They hanged Haw-Haw.  We use Predator swarms.

Superb-looking drama of Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Okinawa and the Peleliu invasions by the responsible Hollywood duo of Spielberg and Hanks. The Pacific War against the Japanese is rich with doubts.  A burning Bunker Hill off Okinawa is the least of the irony.  The imperial aggression was fed in 1905 by the TR-imposed peace treaty that enslaved Korea to Tokyo and at the same time alienated Tokyo from both Washington and Petersburg. At war with the Triple Entente, Berlin invited Tokyo to its side during the First War, and the failed effort produced the strange alliance of Berlin and Tokyo predators in 1941. Why did we smash Japan? Because it attacked Pearl Harbor. Why did Japan attack Pearl Harbor? Because we cut off its commodities, especially oil, and threatened more? Why? Puzzle continues. The Pacific was a massively brutal and merciless war between two peoples who do not have anything in common and barely want what the other guy has. Sad, blunt ironies.  Iwo Jima and Okinawa proved little and destroyed many, and to what end?  The bombs that we used against helpless civilians produced industrial mass murder with incendiaries in Tokyo.

From yesteryear, a clip from the 2004 John Edwards campaign, managed by media consultant David Axelrod. "The politics of hope" in the first draft for the Junior Senator from North Carolina. In 2006, Axelrod moved the hope trope to Deval Patrick's successful campaign in Massachusetts, and then in 2008, David Axelrod moved the hope trope to the successful candidacy of Senator Barrack Obama. Hope by any name is the same creative cynicism that moves partisans looking for a meaningless thrill in a national campaign. David Axelrod is the common theme, a pudgy, 1980 hirsute, parochial newspaperman who turned himself into a hope trope franchiser. Clever. Without a pay-off. Edwards is now a pariah. Patrick is helplessly disdained for re-election. POTUS Obama faces a Dien Bien Phu of policy with healthcare. The hope trope idles, like a Harry Potter spell, waiting for the new new thing.

Karl Rove's detailed and tedious explanation of the timeline on the Valerie Plame affair during the Bush years makes it is more clear than ever before that this was a witch hunt that amused the media and thrilled the lowly Democrats but that served no purpose of national security or civi order. It was gotcha, and from the first it was directed at the White House just because George Bush had won re-election and this bedeviled him. Rove's enemies were self-promoting partisans, and good for them (so is Rove); but to pretend there was anything but animal spirits and sniper fire is to pretend that Washington is modest about its obsessions. Witch hunts are diverting in a city of overpriced eateries and bad weather.

Speaking Greg Zuckerman, WSJ, on Wednesday 10P EST re the trouble in Greece and the euro, and how the lords of Europe have settled on blaming the speculators and bear raiders for the mess we're in. Actually, the mess they're in. The fun part is that they will now try to ban speculative credit default swaps, or CDSs, the genius derivatives that caused the small dust-up called the Panic of 2008. Memory serves that when the pols get to blaming the traders, or blaming the gods, and most especially blaming the big boss Zeus, we are getting back to the new normal of shakedowns, blame-shifts, NIMBY and bloviating. "Money goes where it is treated best" is the acorn that signifies. Ban the CDSs and you create conditions for another derivative creature to eat lunch under a new oak tree.

Meg Whitman continues to rewrite how to win votes and influence Jerry Brown by staging a presser in Jerry Brown's Oakland and then refusing to answer the predictably snarky and gossipy questions by the San Francisco media, such as, "How do you feel about . . .?" The strangeness of California politics is that a billionaire is running for a job that guarantees frustration and inadequacy -- and she describes herself as the "Un-Schwarzenegger."  The Sacramento legislature makes the Bolsheviks in Petersburg 1918 look decorous and rational. Meg Whitman, now tossing aside the game Steve Poizner, takes on the deeply ironic and unconvincing Jerry "Pull-Up" Brown. The GOP has the edge in the argument, as Brown represents the antique Democratic Party of 1980, and Meg Whitman may very well blunder into the job. What is worth watching from now on is how she treats the media. This may set a trend. Who is less popular -- the media or the pols or the Bolshies or . . .  ?

POTUS is standing pat with a script that cannot change from the SOTU, and he must pursue his healthcare neverland as if the ambition is a policy.  Same arguments; same disdain; same arranged crowd of well-wishers behind him; same inattention to the polls and the demoralized Democrats.  The best House whip count anyone can find this news cycle is fewer than 200. Financial Times political correspondent Anna Fifield tells me that the FT hears that Bart Stupak has 12 negative votes. I have not heard movement from the 37 Blue Dogs. Jason Altimire, a Democratic freshman of 4th Pennsylvania, was feted at the White House last week but is reported (by Salena Zito, Pittsburgh T-R) to be unmoved from his "No" vote. Spoke John Fund, WSJ, who continues to hear fewer than 200.  The March 18 date is likely to slip; and Anna Fifield mentions Easter break as the drop-dead date.  After that, the Tea Parties own the argument again.  The best case for POTUS is to get the bill signed and change the subject.  John Fund raises the scenario that the whip count will not move, and that when POTUS returns from Southeast Asia he will change the subject.  What healthcare?

Deep irony that the Obama administration can correctly claim that Iraq is a shining policy success for POTUS, who took time this news cycle to remind his fervent supporters among the progressives that he is continuing to withdraw American combat troops from the theater.  John Fund observed Sunday 7 that Iraq is a credit to the continuity of the Bush/Obama policy.  John Avlon observed that foreign policy wins POTUS high marks from the critical independent voters.  Still, it is unlikely that POTUS will travel to Iraq to celebrate this administration's deserved credit -- under a banner that dryly reads, "Mission accomplished."

What I've learned from several correspondents over the last two weeks is that the trouble with Greece is well understood and is a product of at least a decade of sham Eurozone manipulation of state budget deficits. The EU is 16 countries, up from the original 11 in '97-98; however they have all, save Germany, played accounting games since the first years in order to comply with an impossible mandate to keep annual deficits at 3% of GDP. The US is currently at 11%; Britain is near to same.  (No deeper irony than that the People's Republic of California is much a talking point in Athens as an example of a flagrant profligate.)  Only Germany has the moxie to live within its means and still make money. Germany is the dominator. Also part of the ongoing crisis is that Nicholas Sarkozy is running against IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Kahn for the French presidency, and Strauss-Kahn is ahead in the polls. Therefore France keeps the IMF out of the center stage. The Greeks must now suffer for the other EU creative accountants, such as Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Italy -- and even France. What does this mean for the US? The smart guys have bet a ton that the euro goes down to parity with the US dollar. Spoke to Katherine Burton, Bloomberg, of a now most romantic and suspicious sit-down private dinner in Manhattan on February 8 in which 23 hedge fund gurus discussed shorting the euro. The US Justice Department now seeks answers from the 23 geniuses, and French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde cries "speculators!" whenever she is asked about the falling euro. Delightful. Cry havoc. Next big bear bet is the yuan. And what does this do for the Obama administration? Nada. POTUS is sidelined with an obsession about healthcare. Nero fiddles. Lisbon, Madrid and Rome burn next. Berlin rules 65 years after the Soviets launched on Berlin.

Grand fun to report from Andy Pazstor, WSJ, and Bob Zimmerman, author, Universe in a Mirror, that the ground troops at NASA Big Space have joined up with the staffers on Capitol Hill on the Science and Technology posses to throw off the Obama administration ambition to close down the Constellation program, the shutte program, the Moon and Mars colonies planning. The Obama administration did not consult Congress and was handed its severed head when it tried to plead poverty and priority. Congress loves Big Space. NASA is Big Space. Michael Coats at Johnson Manned Space Center has now drawn up a plan B that will continue the Orion and Ares programs.  The coup is done.  NASA, ten years to the moon; Obama administration, zero.

Spoke to Taegan Goddard, Political Wire of CQ, re the scandal breaking late in the news cycle that Upstate New York Congressman Eric Massa (D-NY) has announced his retirement based upon a whiff of scandal involving a male staffer and inappropriate language or intent.  Sexual harassment is the loud whisper.  Majority Leader Steny Hoyer commented by using the name "Mark Foley" in the tale.  Massa was elected in 2008 from the 29th CD along the Pennsylvania border in Western New York.  The district includes heavily Roman Catholic Reagan Democrats as well as a sizeable Republican voter base.  Commented an unnamed Democratic congressman (likely Steny Hoyer)  to the NY Daily News, "Massa just killed us."  I am told there is much more to this tale, including cover-up by the leadership.  Mention that Massa says that he is retiring.  He was a "No" vote for the first healthcare bill in the House, not because he is conservative, but because he wanted single-payer.  Am told he is likely to be a "Yes" vote now.  If he survives the scandal; if he can bear up under the Republican assault.  Replay the Mark Foley brouhaha of 2006.  

Speaking John Fund Tuesday 2 March re the last days of Rahm Emanuel.  The small mystery at the White House media center is why Rahm Emanuel has launched a flimsy self-promoting campaign for himself by calling up pet Washington journalists and boasting pf his successes.  The other small mystery is why Emanuel is still the chief of staff after the catastrophe of healthcare.  Watching a train wreck is fun.  But this is such a slow-mo wreck that there needs to be a subplot.  

What is surprising still is that the British chattering class cannot get past the ancient 2003 Tony Blair decision to join with George Bush in smashing Iraq's Hussein face in 2003 and pushing Iraq into civil war. It is a strange and repetitive mania for the Brits. The USA long left behind the Baghdad drama by electing POTUS Obama and moving on to domestic noise. Gordon Brown is not a bad pol, not a good pol; Gordon Brown is a stale pol and that is unacceptable. POTUS Obama turned the page, and for that he is a treasure. Imagine being stuck now with John McCain? We do not need leaders. We need foils.  Blair is a perfect American foil: bright, charming, obedient.  Brown is a character actor who has accepted the role of pariah junior.

"We have a different value system here..." says Mrs. Pelosi of the GOP House, when asked why the Blair House gabfest did not happen in March 2009 instead of at the very end of the end of the process, after Mrs. Pelosi wrote the healthcare bill that she passed with 219 Democrats last fall. Mrs. Pelosi possesses everything the voluble and vain M. Robespierre missed out on with his unfortunate early exit -- a grinding passion for victory over the enemies of the Revolution - in this case, the puny and disorganized GOP - jailed at Luxembourg Palace Prison in order to be guillotined in the Reign of Terror now under way in Washington.  Mrs. Pelosi may be fighting the last revolution?  It is the independent voters, who rejected the GOP in 2006 and 2008, who will now reject Mrs. Pelosi's majority.  I am tempted by the fresh opinion that each day of reconciliation brings Washington closer to the return of the GOP flim-flam of yesteryear.