Free Frank Warner

Are the Supreme Leader and his son stealing Iran’s money?

I’m shocked, shocked to find a dictator would steal money while he’s oppressing the people.

Michael Ledeen on Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei:

The London Guardian, in a carefully worded account, tells us that the most powerful figure in the ongoing repression is Khamenei’s second son, Mojtaba. He is said to be particularly enraged by the British Government’s seizure of more than a billion dollars in London accounts, at least some of which belongs to him. No one would be surprised to find that the supreme leader was a very wealthy man, or that he had salted away some of his money outside Iran.

I thought Iran’s democratic revolution was 10 years away. Now I think it’ll be sooner. But the democrats have a lot of people to chase to the airport.

When you’ve got an Islamic Republic that is neither godly nor a republic, you want to break the chains.

Frank Warner

Obama did well in Russia, and then he didn’t

Read this account by Kim Zigfeld of President Obama’s Reagan-sounding preparation for his Russia trip, and the chaotic Carter tone at the end.

Be sure to read Part 1, and then click to Part 2.

OK, I’m disappointed with the outcome.

Frank Warner

Who did Michael Jackson want the ‘man in the mirror’ to look like?

My guess: Michael Jackson had all that plastic surgery to look like David Cassidy.

But faces, like personalities, can be altered only so much before they just get uglier.

Frank Warner

Another reason I voted for Barack Obama

So he could thank the Russians for that “pretty good deal” on Alaska.

Heck, 1.9 cents an acre. Even in 1867, that was good. We really can’t thank Russia enough.

Frank Warner

Another reason I voted for Barack Obama

So he could explain why a sensible democratic government finds it necessary to imprison indefinitely some prisoners of an unconventional war, just as President Bush did.

Frank Warner

Another reason I voted for Barack Obama

Because on the subject of freedom, he’d learn to speak like President Bush, with a personal perspective to support that high cause.

President Obama today in Moscow:

By no means is America perfect. But it is our commitment to certain universal values which allows us to correct our imperfections, and to grow stronger over time. Freedom of speech and assembly has allowed women, minorities, and workers to protest for full and equal rights. The rule of law and equal administration of justice has busted monopolies, shut down political machines, and ended abuses of power. Independent media have exposed corruption at all levels of business and government. Competitive elections allow us to change course and hold our leaders accountable. If our democracy did not advance those rights, I – as a person of African ancestry – wouldn’t be able to address you as an American citizen, much less a President.

Around the world, America supports these values because they are moral, and also because they work. The arc of history shows us that governments which serve their own people survive and thrive; governments which serve only their own power do not. Governments that represent the will of their people are far less likely to descend into failed states, to terrorize their citizens, or to wage war on others. Governments that promote the rule of law, subject their actions to oversight, and allow for independent institutions are more dependable trading partners. And in our own history, democracies have been America’s most enduring allies, including those we once waged war with in Europe and Asia – nations that today live with great security and prosperity.

It did take Obama some time to get around to this subject, which his Russian affairs adviser said he’d talk about first, but the president handled it well.

Frank Warner

Ike and the moon

Sometimes we forget that Dwight Eisenhower was president for one-tenth of the 1960s. And so I was surprised to find this picture of Ike on Sept. 8, 1960, with rocket scientist Werner Von Braun.

Here is Eisenhower, eight months before the first Mercury space flight and President Kennedy’s “man on the moon” speech, and nine years before we put a man on the moon (actually, four men on the moon in 1969 alone).

At the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, Ike is looking over a model of the Saturn I rocket, and he isn’t far from the full-size Saturn I rocket engines.

A short wait. The Saturn I sent the first Apollo astronauts around the moon in 1968. The Saturn V would launch Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins toward that first manned landing 40 years ago this month.

(Correction: The Saturn IB started the Apollo manned program, but the Saturn V was the launch vehicle for every manned moon flight, including Apollo 8 in 1968. Thanks, Joel Raupe at Lunar Networks blog.)

The 1960s were a dazzling decade. If Communists were not trying to enslave the world in those days, forcing us to oppose them at considerable cost, the progress could have been even more astounding.

Frank Warner

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Note: In the enlarged photograph, you can see a sign on the floor, "Hard Hats Must Be Worn in This Area." See any hard hats?

Nuclear arms treaty with Russia is no priority

I’ve long maintained that the Democratic Party’s platform is mired in 1980, when the right to abortion still wasn’t assured and the Vietnam War seemed proof America was wrong about everything.

Now President Obama’s odd quest for a nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia makes me wonder if the Democrats also believe the Soviet Union still exists, as it did in 1980.

What is the point of the U.S. and Russia reducing nuclear weapons today? The matter was urgent in the 1980s, when President Reagan negotiated the first nuclear arms reduction treaty with the Soviet evil empire.

No big worry. But today Russia is at least a shell of a democracy, and it no longer has the ideology of world conquest. No one on Earth has been fretting lately about the Russian nuclear threat. So why work so hard on a treaty that doesn’t matter?

The only upside to reducing U.S. and Russian nukes would be the ability to tell other nations, look, we’ve reduced our arsenals, why not get rid of yours?

Weighing against that point is the likelihood that, if we cut back on our atom bombs, smaller powers seeking respect will calculate that it’s cheaper than ever to match the U.S. and Russia, so why not go nuke, too?

Putin promises? So why is this a priority? And does anyone believe that, if Vladimir Putin promises to shrink his arsenal by a third, he won’t cheat?

Frank Warner

Time for another $1 trillion ‘stimulus’?

It’s time for more economic predictability and less “regime uncertainty.”

Forget another “stimulus.” If it's as badly planned as the first $797 billion “stimulus” package and as irrationally executed as the bailout for General Motors and its union, it will leave us with only more crushing debt and more wildly expensive obligations to keep things running long after they should be closed.

Last I heard, we had not yet spent more than 10 percent of the first “stimulus” package. Apparently, there was a lot of shoveling in that the “shovel-ready” talk last winter. There’s no shortage of mad money from that first round of borrowed cash from China to prime our pumps and cover for emergencies.

Need for balance. Another round of trillion-dollar borrowing would be irresponsible. It’s time to stop trying to re-inflate the bubble, time to let the economy find a new equilibrium under the new realities, time to do all we can to help those who hurt most in the transition.

Frank Warner

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Note: Look at how Paul Krugman publishes an Obama team graph that promises the stimulus-recovery package will reduce unemployment "almost immediately," but then he denies anyone in the Obama administration ever said the stimulus would reduce unemployment almost immediately. The Obama team graph projected that the jobless rate should be peaking now. For a giant bill passed in early February, five months is almost immediately.

Why did Sarah Palin abruptly decide to resign?

This is starting to sound like the plot to “The Prisoner.” Why did you resign?

But Gov. Sarah Palin’s decision, announced in a hasty manner three days ago to take effect July 26, is so inexplicable the FBI has issued a statement that it is not investigating her.

It’s a laugh (risible, establishment bloggers would say) the way that both her most ardent admirers and most virulent detractors are reading the tea leaves of Wasilla, Alaska.

Frank Warner