The ultra-liberal Huffington Post blared that President Obama: “MOVING TO AVOID POLITICAL SUICIDE”; as the White House abandoned efforts to pass his American Jobs Act and went into a maximum defensive mode to save the President’s imploding re-election campaign following the loss of Anthony Weiner’s ultra-Democrat New York House seat and the launch of an inter-party rebellion to deny Obama the Democratic nomination for President.

The President took his best shot at trying to sell America his vision for new stimulus spending in last week’s joint- session of Congress speech the main-stream-media adoringly termed: “forceful yet plain-spoken message on jobs and the economy”. Hope for the bill’s passage wilted on Tuesday with front page article: “Support for Big Government Jobs Programs has Evaporated” simultaneously published in the conservative Big Government and the ultra-liberal Huffington Post. The story revealed a 50% opinion poll plunge in “likely voter” support for spending on job creation has doomed much of the bill.

Legislative losses can cause political damage to any Presidential Administration; but the stunning blow last night as voters in New York’s 9th Congressional District, formerly held by disgraced Democrat Anthony Weiner, reversed a nearly 90-year tradition by electing a Republican has begun what Andrew Breitbart termed a “Civil War Against Obama”.

The first hint there might be a coup d’etat brewing against the President by the extremist wing of his party came ten days ago in an Op Ed by Mat Stoller: “What Democrats can do about Obama” published in the liberal “Salon” website.

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The stunning speed of events in the Middle East that brought about the fall of Tunisia’s strong-arm dictator, Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, followed by the resignation of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak might suggest that our intelligence services were caught napping.  While the final chapter of the ousters of Mubarak and Ben Ali have not yet been written, depending upon the outcome, political recriminations are certain to follow.  After all, some historians still are asking the question:  “Who lost China?”  While blame is invariably a by‑product of political debate in a democracy, particularly where our intelligence services seem to have been caught flat‑footed, we suspect there is less here than meets the eye.

To over simplify, we might categorize small intelligence failures into two main areas:  those that involve state secrets that could be uncovered only by traditional cloak and dagger work; and those that derive from actual political conditions on the ground that can foment potential revolutionary change.  Even though the latter can involve tens of thousands of people when they erupt, they are more apt to be missed than intelligence that is gathered through traditional sleuthing.  We will get back to the reason for this later in this essay.   Our failure to know that Saddam’s nuclear arsenal didn’t exist or that North Korea would suddenly conduct nuclear tests or that some shadowy group would attack the USS Cole and later the World Trade Center, are failures of our traditional intelligence assets.   Although those events were planned virtually under cover of strict military secrecy, which is obviously difficult to penetrate, it is not an excuse for northpoor undercover work given the billions of dollars we spend on it.

Contrast that with political explosions in Tunisia, Egypt. Libya, Bahrain or Iran, which toppled from power the likes of President Ben Ali, President Mubarak, or, 35 years ago, the Shah of Iran.  Those events, once triggered, seem to take on a life of their own often leading to chaos with participants having different goals . . . or no simple unifying objective.  Sometimes they operate like mobs without leaders.  The forces that are unleashed seem to know what they don’t want (the current despotic leadership) but typically can’t articulate a coherent set of demands.  What is even more difficult to predict is the potential ripple effect of a sea change in a despotic form of government.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson is joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss rising food prices, inflation and the overthrowing of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Ron Paul: Bernanke Is Delusional About Inflation
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Boehner warns: ‘We’re broke’ as Obama plans to increase speed of spending cuts to $1.1trillion
Hosni Mubarak Steps Down, “Egypt is Free”
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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech discuss Donald Berwick’s testimony on Capitol Hill today. Then Pejman Yousefzadeh talks about Mubarak and the White House.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Berwick to Testify Before House for the First Time
Don Berwick Online
Politico Arena: Has Mubarak Already Won? – Pej responds
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From the Associated Press:

President Hosni Mubarak will meet the demands of protesters, military and ruling party officials said Thursday in the strongest indication yet that Egypt’s longtime president may be about to give up power and that the armed forces were seizing control.

Gen. Hassan al-Roueini, military commander for the Cairo area, told thousands of protesters in central Tahrir Square, “All your demands will be met today.” Some in the crowd held up their hands in V-for-victory signs, shouting “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great,” a victory cry used by secular and religious people alike.

The military’s supreme council was meeting Thursday, without the commander in chief Mubarak, and announced on state TV its “support of the legitimate demands of the people.” A spokesman read a statement that the council was in permanent session “to explore “what measures and arrangements could be made to safeguard the nation, its achievements and the ambitions of its great people.”

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The Egyptian government may have blocked Egyptians’ access to the Internet, but it couldn’t block the Internet itself. Thanks to the likes of John Scott-Railton, voices of countless Egyptian protesters continue to wend through the web.

Once the government imposed muzzling began, the 27-year-old UCLA graduate student reached out to friends in Egypt by telephone, gathered updates, and posted them to his Twitter account @Jan25voices, named after the day the protests began.

Nearly 700 tweets later, Scott-Railton (who up until last week was a Twitter newbie) soon found himself in the midst of the Middle East revolt. In one week he has attracted 6,700 followers and counting and his audio clips of Egyptian voices have been played more than 3.5 million times.

Reason.tv caught up with Scott-Railton at his UCLA office.
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Last evening on MSNBC, Rachel Maddow took a few moments on her show to jab at the Beltway press, suggesting that the press in DC is so annoyed at being “sidelined” by the Egypt story that it’s “clawing and scratching to find some partisan story to tell here.”  Maddow then proceeded to slam a list of conservative politicians and bloggers, including freshman Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, Michigan Congressman Thaddeus McCotter, former UN Ambassador John Bolton, and blogger Pam Geller.

One other story that Maddow called out was from RedState.com, to which she mocked the suggestion that unions and the U.S. state department are involved in the Egypt protests and quipped, “What, no ACORN?”

The author of that post is a friend of mine and fellow BigGovernment contributor, who, in addition to blogging at RedState.com, also runs Labor Union Report.  I was surprised when I saw his post called out on Maddow’s show.  Not only is he not usually a typical target of MSNBC’s brand of snark, but it was obvious that Maddow – or whomever does her research – had not even read the post beyond paragraph two.  If they had, they would have noticed that the information came from a few familiar sources:  the Huffington Post and WikiLeaks. And those sources contained some potent information that’s directly related to the current uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.

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Barack Obama and the U.S. government have called for a “peaceful transition” in Egypt, in response to massive protests, riots and escalating anarchy. But I wonder if President Obama is taking notes? I wonder if he realizes just how close America is to facing a similar crisis that could result in riots, revolt in the streets, and economic paralysis. I wonder if President Obama would act much different than President Mubarak in Egypt. So far, small signs hint that Obama might turn out to be just as intolerant to dissent as Mubarak.

Think it couldn’t happen here? Think again. Let’s review the economic crisis that America faces at this very moment. Just in the days since Obama’s State of the Union speech there have been numerous signs that the U.S. faces an economic Armageddon. Dark storm clouds are fast approaching:

• The U.S. budget deficit is far more than even economic experts imagined.
• Unemployment is up yet again — far more than the experts projected.
• Social Security shortfalls are bigger and have happened sooner than any expert predicted — a decade sooner.
• Fourth Quarter GDP was lower than projected — and even the figure released was merely the result of the Fed printing fake money 24 hours a day, to create false consumer confidence, to prop up a U.S. economy that is falling off a cliff.
• The foreclosure crisis is deepening beyond what any expert imagined. As a result, real estate prices are falling even further, thereby threatening not only consumer spending, but the very survival of major banks.
• Inflation is skyrocketing on the two things that matter most — food and energy prices. One more disaster — perhaps the fall of Egypt, leading to an oil crisis — could lead to a hyperinflation that could turn America into a combination of Zimbabwe and the Weimar Republic.
• We already face economic Armageddon on a state and local level. U.S. cities, counties and states are teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. Their grave financial condition is the result of massive unsustainable spending and debt, caused in large part by irresponsible public employee salaries, pensions and health benefits. The worst part of this crisis is that the stimulus money is gone and the federal government is bankrupt, unable to bail itself out, let alone the cities, counties and states.
• There are early signs of revolt and anarchy here in America — with a record number of policemen shot and killed during a two-week period in January.
• The Middle East threatens to turn into a powder keg that could lead not to democracy, but to radical Islamic control of many Arab countries. This grave new threat to America, American interests, and the survival of our ally Israel, would lead to more military spending and a potential oil crisis that could engulf and overwhelm the U.S. economy. In our current vulnerable economic state this tragedy could set off a worldwide economic panic.
• Japan’s credit rating was downgraded on what most economists agree is a disastrous slide toward oblivion. Japan’s debt is so huge it can never be repaid. As one famous economist describes the crisis they are facing: “Japan is a bug in search of a windshield.” Japan’s impending implosion could also trigger a worldwide economic panic.
• Spain just announced unemployment of over 20%. Not only does this news threaten the survival of the EU, it also drives a stake through Obama’s strategy for saving the U.S. economy by creating green jobs. Spain proves there is no market for green jobs. The whole idea is a mirage created by leftist progressive politicians desperately grasping for straws.

Can you imagine that all of this toxic news has occurred in only the few days since Obama’s State of the Union?

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We are navigating through truly uncharted political and economic territory.  Members of the financial cognoscenti have freshly alluded to the notion of the ‘government bubble’ as the next blow to the world economic order.

Since 2008 we have seen the housing, financial, and insurance markets hit on a global level, one after the other.  At one point, they all burst because they were unsustainable.  You don’t have to be a politico to know that the sovereign debt crisis is real.  Just look around.  As European countries (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain, and Belgium) reshuffle hundreds of billions of dollars to lighten rising government deficit and debt levels, Republican appropriators here at home futilely attempt to get our books in order.  Ladies and gentleman, something is afoot.

The recent crisis in Egypt has only intensified discussion on the stability of the world economic order. No one knows what’s going to happen.  In an ideal situation, a peaceful transition of power will re-stabilize what has triggered a sell-off in equity markets and posed more geo-political uncertainty in the region as energy commodities are poised for gains based on fear.  And the bad news just keeps pouring in.

According to Reuters,

Adding to Cairo’s financial woes, ratings agency Moody’s downgraded the country’s debt rating on concern the Mubarak regime may spend more to placate protesters.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca and Eliot Abrams, former senior national security adviser to George W. Bush and assistant secretary of state for Ronald Reagan to discus the unrest in Egypt.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Abrams: Bush Was Right About Freedom in the Arab World
Abrams: Lessons of January
Hamid: Obama Got Egypt Wrong
Muravchik: Three Scenarios in Egypt
RS: Egypt Approaches the Abyss
Abrams: Pressure Points Blog
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There is very little difference between what intelligence analysts do and what ordinary folks try to accomplish when they pick up a newspaper, listen to the evening news, or read the posts on this and other sites. In every case, wittingly or not, they attempt to separate the revealing details from the background noise.

That is what we should do with regard to the violent incident that took place when the Israelis boarded the six ships constituting the so-called Gaza Flotilla. Most of what we have learned in the aftermath is true and appalling but, in the long run, inconsequential.

The Israeli soldiers who landed on the Mavi Marmara (in Turkish, the Blue Sea of Marmara) in preparation for conducting the ship to an Israeli port – from which the goods being carried could be sent on to Gaza – were, in fact, ambushed, as Allison Kaplan Sommer indicates in her lucid analysis of the evidence that has become available, and all of the usual suspects quickly lined up to condemn Israel for crimes she did not commit.

This is a tiresome, all-too-predictable business reminiscent of the campaign launched in the wake of the clearing action undertaken some years ago at the Jennin refugee camp and of the campaign launched after the Israelis intervened in in 2008 to put an end to Hamas’ firing of missiles into Israel from their stronghold in Gaza. It is part and parcel of a long struggle on the part of the PLO in days gone by and of Hamas now to stage incidents and rally world public opinion against the Israelis for doing what they have to do to defend themselves.

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[Note: This is the latest segment in an ongoing series about Code Pink and its co-founder Jodie Evans. Click here to read earlier articles.]

Fresh on the heels of their Hamas-protected trip to Gaza, the so-called feminist, American antiwar group Code Pink, co-founded by top Obama funder Jodie Evans, is running banner advertisements on the English language version of the official Web site of a terrorist sympathizing group, the Muslim Brotherhood, one of which invites the Muslim Brotherhood to “join us in cleansing our country.”

The ad, titled “Arrest the War Criminals” with a subhead that contains the invitation to “join us in cleansing our country” links back to a Code Pink site that calls for the kidnapping of former President George W. Bush, his wife Laura and other former members of his administration through ‘citizens arrests’ for defending America against terrorists in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks by Al Qaeda.

The Jawa Report first reported the advertising in a post this morning (January 11, 2010).

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