Obama on courageous Iranian protestors … weak and vacillating

George Bush has been unequivocal in his support of freedom in Iran. Twice in his State of the Union addresses he spoke to the Iranian people. 

And to the Iranian people, I say tonight: As you stand for your own liberty, America stands with you. --- State of the Union address February 2, 2005

And tonight, let me speak directly to the citizens of Iran: America respects you, and we respect your country. We respect your right to choose your own future and win your own freedom. And our nation hopes one day to be the closest of friends with a free and democratic Iran. --- State of the Union address, January 31, 2006

Contrast that to Barack Obama’s tepid support.

I am deeply troubled by the violence that I’ve been seeing on television…. --- Obama, June 15, 2009

I'm very concerned based on some of the tenor -- and tone of the statements that have been made -- that the government of Iran recognize that the world is watching --- Obama, June 19, 2009

We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people…. --- Obama, June 20, 2009

Not exactly Ronald Reagan at the Berlin Wall. There are events in history when great leaders seize the moment. It was Hungary in 1956, Prague in 1968. It was Yeltsin standing atop a tank outside of the Blue House in Moscow. Obama seems more interested in keeping himself in Ahmadinejad’s good graces than standing on principle. He is letting the courageous people of Iran down. If Ahmadinejad wants to have talks with Obama, he will find a way. Criticism won’t queer the deal. It didn’t with Reagan and the Soviet leaders on arms talks. It seems Obama has established a mindset of realpolitik, accepting as legitimate any regime, no matter how brutal or corrupt. By playing up to the dictatorial leadership of Iran, he comes across as weak and vacillating.

Herschel Smith, writing in The Captain’s Journal hits the nail on the head on the misplaced mindset of the administration.

As Netanyahu was recently told by an American official, “We are going to change the world. Please, don’t interfere.” But as we are beginning to see, situations that contradict the world view don’t result in amending that world view. They simply stupefy the administration. Thus they stare in disbelief and silence as Iran goes up in flames.

The Democrat solution, inflate our way out of debt?

This recent item from Bloomberg News caught my attention. Paul Volcker has grown increasingly frustrated over delays in setting up the economic advisory group President Barack Obama picked the former Federal Reserve chairman to lead, people familiar with the matter said. Volcker, 81, blames Obama’s National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers for slowing down the effort to organize the panel of outside advisers, the people said. Summers isn’t regularly inviting Volcker to White House meetings and hasn’t shown interest in collaborating on policy or sharing potential solutions to the economic crisis, they said. Paul Volker was Federal Reserve Chairman during the Carter and Reagan years. He is a fiscal hawk as any Fed Chairman should be. That job, first and foremost, is to maintain the value and stability of the dollar. And he did that when inflation ran rampant in the seventies. Instead of the ill advised wage and price controls under Nixon and tepid Fed Funds and discount rate increases later, he took the bull by the horns and dramatically and mercilessly broke the back of stagflation of the Carter years by upping Fed Funds rates to 20% and holding them there. But he caused a recession and many Democrats think that caused the defeat of Carter in 1980. Inflation is a means of escaping debt, both personal and by government. But it comes at the price of a cheapened dollar. And I suspect that this is what the new administration is aiming to do. With endemic inflation, long term interest rates will climb sky high (the government can’t control them, they are market driven) slowing business growth, exacerbate inflation by upping the cost of imported goods, devastate those living on fixed incomes and kill any thought of maintaining a savings account. One only needs to look at the hyperinflation in Zimbabwe where in mid-January it issued a 100 trillion dollar note worth US $33. Yikes, at that rate we could pay off our national debt with your change from McDonalds. Democrats have traditionally been inflation friendly. In the years they controlled the House, especially in the Carter years, when inflation ran rampant (over 10% at times), they used bracket creep to raise taxes. Then at election time they magnanimously voted to "readjust" the brackets, billing it a tax cut. The cuts were all illusory. But they kept the Democrats in office. Reagan’s tax reform in the early eighties put an end to that game by indexing most tax rates. Fiscal and monetary irresponsibility will kill the dollar as an international currency. It will end our ability to sell our debt to foreign nations. It will put us in the category of Mexico, Argentina and Zimbabwe in international markets. The utter disregard of sound economic principles in the current stimulus bill is a giant step in that direction. Hang tough Paul Volker.