Kourosh Tari

Andrew Malcolm

Here’s something that John McCain and Barack Obama and Sarah Palin and even longtime Washingtonian Joe Biden probably don’t know. Not to mention Bob Barr, Ralph Nader and Ron Paul, who usually knows everything.

It’s a fascinating footnote to the economic and political bailout debate that’s kept so many people from more properly focusing on the pennant races and the Colts’ problems in the last week. (Incidentally, do you think we’d have had this big fight if President Bush had called it a “rescue” plan instead?)

Our buddy from two lifetimes ago, Carl Lavin over at Forbes.com, points out a fascinating paragraph buried in a story on his website late last week by Brian Wingfield and Josh Zumbrun.

You know, this $700-billion figure that exploded into everyday political parlance almost as fast as Sarah?

Read Full Story

Marx’s Proposal Number Five seems to be the leading motivation for those backing the Wall Street bailout

In his Communist Manifesto,published in 1848, Karl Marx proposed 10 measures to be implemented after the proletariat takes power, with the aim of centralizing all instruments of production in the hands of the state. Proposal Number Five was to bring about the “centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.”

If he were to rise from the dead today, Marx might be delighted to discover that most economists and financial commentators, including many who claim to favour the free market, agree with him.

Read Complete Article

The New York Times
September 29, 2008

Washington

The coverage of the latest bombastic tour of Manhattan by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran may have obscured the fact that the International Atomic Energy Agency has released its latest report on Tehran’s nuclear program, and it contains some unpleasant news: By the time we inaugurate our next president, Iran is likely to achieve “virtual” nuclear weapon status. This means that it will be able to produce, within a few months of deciding to do so, enough weapon-grade uranium to fuel a bomb. Read the rest of this entry »

By John R. Bolton

Posted: Thursday, September 25, 2008

ARTICLES

New York Daily News

Publication Date: September 25, 2008

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, just a few hours after President Bush. The contrast was palpable. Ahmadinejad expressed continued defiance of the UN Security Council and the International Atomic Energy Agency, insisting that Iran would continue and even accelerate its nuclear program. Bush, by contrast, has overseen nearly six years of failure trying to stop Iran from doing exactly that.

Iran is now closer than ever to achieving its long-held strategic objective of obtaining deliverable nuclear weapons. Why has Iran succeeded and the United States failed in this struggle? What does it tell us about the options available to our next President, in this increasingly dangerous situation? Will Iran be a centerpiece of the first presidential debate? Read Original Article

Twenty-seven years ago, Israel was condemned by the media for attacking and destroying an Iraqi nuclear reactor. Years later, many of those journalists who had condemned Israel admitted that they had been wrong, and that the Israeli attack had been justified.