Maggie's Farm

What’s this Turkey hash with Erdogan’s fingers in it?

Many, including in Washington, don’t “get” how a NATO nation, since WWI on a Western-oriented course (at least until 2002), could be so complicit in the IHH thugs upon the Marvi Marmara and so palsy with Iran, Syria and other despots challenging regional peace and the US.

I turned to Gerald Robbins, the Turkish-speaking expert and Associate Scholar at Philadelphia’s Foreign Policy Research Institute, about what’s on the plate in Ankara.

Turkey’s internal politics are a mystery to most Americans.  Robbins says, “The folks around President Obama have no sense of the nuances involved. Symbols far outweigh substance with them.”  Robbins continues:

Their mindframe is Turkey should be elevated in regional importance since it is large, Muslim, and Western-oriented.  Remember that Obama visited Turkey shortly after his inauguration to symbolize a new outlook in regional US diplomacy. Israel is seen as less important since it can’t serve as a “bridge” into the Muslim world.

Robbins asks, “I wonder if the US Jewish lobbies understand this mindframe?"

I asked Robbins to sketch out what Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan’s political environment is about.

The so-called Cadillac excise tax in ObamaCare will force tens of millions of Americans into Yugos.

The 40% excise tax imposed by ObamaCare upon “Cadillac” medical insurance and related plans could actually increase costs to employers by up to 60%.

The Democrat Congress voted for it to penalize the supposedly well-to-do and to raise revenues. Some conservatives support it as well, to force more cost-consciousness in the choice of medical benefits and potentially restrain medical care usage and cost-inflation.

The effects will be drastic, well beyond what many are aware.

The Cadillac excise tax is paid by the administrator of the medical plan, whether the insurer or claims administrator, and will be passed on to the employer sponsoring the plan for its employees.  The excise tax is not deductible from taxes. So, if in, say, a 35% federal tax bracket the 40% becomes an actual 54%. Most states conform to federal tax regs, so add in the state tax impact and the true cost of the Cadillac excise tax can be as much as 60% or more.

The excise tax will take effect in 2018. It impacts the excess of annual premium above $10,200 for an individual or $27,500 for a family (including as of 2013 a restricted to a max of $2500 annual employee contribution to pre-tax flexible spending accounts to pay for out-of-pocket medical expenses), those thresholds then adjusted by CPI inflation which is far below medical cost inflation. (Some “dangerous” trades and some elders have slightly higher thresholds.)

Add that 40% to 60% on top of current and future premiums and the result will be a sharp increase in employers and employees’ costs, resulting in sharp decreases in benefits for medical care.

Now, let’s segue to a medical insurance client of mine in Southern California.  Medical insurance premiums in Southern California are well-below those in many other states, NY, NJ or Mass. as prime examples of states that have much higher premiums due to community rating and guarantee-issue which are also parts of ObamaCare to be imposed on all states.

It’s a small firm. Neither the owners nor their employees are rich. Their earnings are middle-class. The owners are both married with two child dependents. An employee is married, his wife having had expensive life-saving treatments for cancer, an ongoing expense. Their medical insurance is with a major reputable carrier. The plan is a PPO, with in-network and out-of-network benefits. They have excellent in-network access to top doctors and hospitals, but to save his wife’s life the employee had to use the out-of-network benefits to go to another state at Mayo. The employer pays most of the employees’ premium.

The current monthly premium for a family is $3031 ($36,372 annually). (The benefits are below.)

At their last renewal, they could have cut a family’s monthly premium to $2597 ($31,164 annually), for an increase in out-of-network coinsurance (member responsibility to pay) from the present out-of-network 40% of negotiated (discounted) charges and 100% of the excess above that to 50%, an increase of $500 per member in-network and $4000 out-of-network in maximum annual out-of-pocket expense($1000 in-network and $8000 family), and a $5 brand Rx co-pay increase.

The business owners do not drive fancy cars, live in fancy houses, go to fancy restaurants or on fancy vacations.  Their priority is on protecting their families and that of their employees, especially with an employee’s wife having a life-threatening disease needing special out-of-network care.

They chose to not cut benefits, now anyway.

In the future, they will have to cut benefits to far below even the currently available alternative.

Multiply that cut in benefits by millions of employers, and tens of millions of employees.

As Al Jolson famously said, “Ya ain’t seen nothin’ yet!” Americans with medical insurance will be forced by ObamaCare to switch to Yugos.

(Current plan benefits: In-network, doctor visits are $20, hospital inpatient is 20% of the carrier’s negotiated discounted charges, and prescriptions are $10 for generic/$25 for brand on the formulary and $40 non-formulary brand. The annual out-of-pocket maximum is $3000 per member, with a two-member maximum of $6000 for a family. The lifetime covered charges is $5-million. Is that “Cadillac”? Oh, by the way, as Politico reports, the ObamaCare "Health law could ban low-cost plans" as well. American workers are screwed either way by ObamaCare.)

In 1973, Nixon and Kissinger used South Vietnam as a tool to widen the split between China and the Soviet Union. In 2010, Islamists, Iran and other Muslim states use the Obama administration as a tool to split the US from Israel.

Most of us who are still aghast at the Democrat controlled US Congress dooming South Vietnam to fall by cutting off promised arms and air support necessary to its survival also criticized Nixon and Kissinger for walking into the duplicitous trap of the Peace Accords of 1973.  The North Vietnamese rulers had a long, documented history of promising one thing while doing another.

However, Nixon and Kissinger had a bigger game afoot, to reduce tensions with China for our purpose of widening its rift from the Soviet Union, which added pressure on the Soviet Union.

In effect, South Vietnam was a tool to what they had good reasons to believe was a bigger, more important end.  Surely, neither Nixon nor Kissinger expected Nixon’s Watergate downfall and the left Democrats to sweep to Congressional power.

There’s a difference now.

Obama and Clinton may be thinking they are using Israel as a tool to cuddle up to long and continually intransigent Arab states. But they are actually tools themselves of those who seek nothing else than the downfall of Israel and the retreat of the US from confronting their clear goals of dominating the Middle East and, via its oil, Europe.

Obama and Clinton don’t deny the ongoing efforts of Iran in going nuclear or sending men and arms to those attacking US, Iraqi and Afghan troops, to Syria, Lebanon and Gaza. They just avoid the necessary countermeasures and march forward in repeatedly proven delusions of Iran changing its spots and of kumbaya as a replacement for reality.

Nixon and Kissinger had a world view realistically based on US interests furthering a world order of surer peace.  Obama and Clinton, fully consciously or not, have a world view based on US interests being a barrier to a world order of peace, that ignores or excuses or refuses to confront the reality of foes’ unrelenting hate of the US and the West, encouraged by Obamanesque fecklessness.

Oh! Another bit of reality that Obama and apologists can try to ignore: "Iran Revolutionary Guards ready to escort Gaza ships"

- Thanks again, Insty. We appreciate your appreciation, and encourage Insty folks to peruse our eclectic site. You might like it. Or you might not.

P.S.: Hillary Clinton warns Iran not to pull a stunt.  Wake up Hillary, "Iran called our bluff long ago."

Hizbollah, Iran’s tool in Lebanon, is in virtual control of its government, armed with thousands of missiles from Iran directly and via Iran’s Syria conduit, the missiles able to reach all of Israel.

As US Secretary Of Defense Robert Gates said last month:

"Syria and Iran are providing Hezbollah with rockets and missiles of ever-increasing capability," he said at a joint news conference with his Israeli counterpart, Ehud Barak.

"And we're at a point now, where Hizbollah has far more rockets and missiles than most governments in the world, and this is obviously destabilizing for the whole region and we're watching it very carefully."

Hizbollah is encouraged by the hamstringing of Israel by the Obama administration and Israel’s allowing it in dealing with the Gaza blockade runners, coupled with the hypocritical outcry of international abettors and appeasers of Hamas.

If Israel has its way and does what’s necessary, Hizbollah should think twice before attacking Israel, unless Washington again tries to hobble Israel and Israel allows it.

Israel is focused on dealing a severe blow to Hizbollah.  Defense News, a leading authoritative US publication on military matters, reports “Israel’s New Hard Line on Hizbollah.” Letting Lebanon, Hizbollah and the world know what’s in store is called deterrence, or stand-by-for-an-ass-whipping.

The last time war broke out along the Lebanese border, Israel acted clumsily and lost its aura of invincibility. If there is a next time, Israel's military brass vows, things will be different.

Under a strategy honed since the 2006 Lebanon war and rehearsed in microcosm in the late-2008 Gaza incursion, a new fight against Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hizbollah would see an all-out assault on the party's arsenals, command centers, commercial assets and strongholds throughout the country.

But it also would include attacks on national infrastructure; a total maritime blockade; and interdiction strikes on bridges, highways and other smuggling routes along the Syrian border with Syria. Meanwhile, land forces would execute a ferocious land grab well beyond the Litani River that Israeli brigades belatedly hobbled toward yet failed to reach in the last war….

In a May 23 interview, Gantz [IDF General Staff] warned that it could take repeated rounds of high-intensity wars to remove the Iranian-trained and financed threat from the north. The aim, he said, is to prolong the periods of relative quiet between war fighting.

"Israel cannot exist with protracted peaks of warfare," he said. "Therefore, we have to reduce them to reasonable levels - similar to the way we drove down terror in the aftermath of Defensive Shield [the IDF's 2002 operation in the West Bank]. That way, we allow our people to live reasonably under a protracted emergency situation until we fix it, and then we go back to square one.

"I doubt there will be peace afterwards, but at least we'll be able to extend the time between peaks ... Through strategic attrition - one round and then another round - we'll create a situation where each new round brings worse results than the last. And that, in and of itself, brings a formidable deterrent."

Here’s a video of tank defense technology that Israel is rapidly implementing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62jzAupr044

The US pressured Israel for, in effect, a cover-up demanded by Turkey of exactly who are all the blockade runners. No one even knows the names or the affiliations of many of the passengers on the ships that tried to run the blockade of Gaza.  All, except a few Israeli-Arabs, have been released by Israel.

Why? The US persuaded Israel to release all quickly, to appease Turkey.

Gerald Seib writes in the Wall Street Journal on US “mediation” between Israeli and Turkish officials:

Ultimately, the mediation succeeded in ending what had emerged as the most immediate cause of rising tensions: the detention in Israel of hundreds of Turkish citizens who formed the bulk of the pro-Palestinian activists removed from the ships….

Meantime, Mr. Obama also called an angry Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The conversation showed that the Israeli-Turkish relationship was in bad shape, but also that the burning issue for Turkey was winning the rapid release of several hundred Turkish citizens who had been taken off the ships by Israeli soldiers. "The immediate tourniquet that could be put on this arterial bleed, if you want, had to do with getting the Turkish citizens home," Gen. Jones said….

Mr. Netanyahu's government agreed to quickly clear an internal legal hurdle that was standing in the way of an immediate release: It persuaded the country's supreme court to deny appeals by some Israeli groups calling for charges to be pressed against those taken off the ships.

The result:

UAE TV reports of those sent to Jordan: “…126 international activists arrived in Jordan….The International activists received an official and public welcome….”

Deutche Welle reports:

Three planes carrying nearly 500 activists from the Gaza aid flotilla arrived in Istanbul early on Thursday, and were welcomed by a crowd of supporters, many of whom waved Palestinian flags and shouted anti-Israel slogans....

Most of the activists were Turkish, but participants from at least 38 different nations were also involved, including Israelis, Palestinians and more than 100 Europeans….Turkey's deputy prime minister, Bulent Arinc [says] "Israel will be asked within the framework of laws to pay for the murders it has committed," [and] Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called for Israel to be punished for what he called "state terrorism."

That’s the thanks Israel gets for acceding to Washington.

BTW, no not really by the way but central to understanding the whys of the snafu at sea, I’m still waiting for journalists or insiders to reveal, those who care enough and have the integrity to know and report, about the “explosive question” to find out exactly what the Obama administration told Israel "through multiple channels, many times" before the raid on the ships about being restrained, as the US State Department spokesman admitted to the Washington Post, and what exactly those in the Netanyahu administration did about it, that may have contributed to the snafu at sea.

There's shame deserved in Washingtom and Jerusalem for expecting thanks or constructive results for self-hobbling. Make the facts public.  If citizens of Israel are expected to die in defense of their country, or be killed for just being in Israel, and if the US is expected to be useful for peace instead of a useful tool for enemies of the US and Israel, we all deserve to know, now.

PowerLine links to my earlier post, "EXPLOSIVE Question" (link to it above).  There are now two instances known of Obama administration pressure on Israel to, in effect, commit "suicide."  When will the major media start demanding to know all the facts, in Washington and in Jerusalem, of these and other instances and when will some brave soul come clean?

Turkey Hash: The Turkish Prime Minister says, “I do not think that Hamas is a terrorist organization."  He also says "the Ten Commandments prohibits Jews from killing." Actually, it says "murder." Perhaps he should talk to his Hamas buddies, eh?

The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs gathered senior Israeli generals to outline the basics of Israeli defense issues and policy, "Israel's Critical Security Needs for a Viable Peace." 

The link has several illuminating videos as well as the reports.  I won’t use up bandwidth or delay it loading on your end by presenting the videos or reports.  If any are interested in the hard facts, please go to the site and see for yourself, including why much of the commentary and suggestions offered by armchair generals and ignorant politicians are dangerous illusions and hogwash, indeed further the aims of Israel and the West's enemies. Security is the object of diplomacy, not to be compromised or sacrificed for "process" or photo-ops that avoid the core issues.

Let’s cut out the crap from the international sob-sisters and abetters of Gazan Hamas thugs. Let the UN Security Council show this video upon its big screen, and then choke on the hasty lies swallowed by puerile politicians of pusillanimity pontificating from far away, and the media that vomited the lies upon its viewers and readers. Those who say anything Israel did was disproportionate parrot the word on cue, without any sense of what it means, in definition or actuality.

There are only two things disproportionate: 1. Israelis were armed with paintball guns and did not use more force to quickly quell and control those violently prepared upon the Mavi Marmara. Instead, Israel, as usual restrained itself, while no such self-control was planned by or exerted upon those on the ship. 2. The usual crowd of sympathizers to terror and antagonists to self-defense knee-jerk echoing of clearly wrong, inane and antagonistic charges against Israel, even despite the clear evidence to the contrary.

The blockade of Gaza is to prevent war material from entering. It preserves the peace. The convoy was offered but refused to have its cargo inspected and if humanitarian transferred to Gaza.

The convoy was not humanitarian in intent or action.  It was a blatant political propaganda ploy, intentionally belligerent in leadership, word and deed, to provoke in order to pressure Israel to commit suicide, opening Gaza’s borders to the type of infusion of deadly weapons and missiles for Hamas to attack Israel that flows unimpeded into Lebanon.

Any who defend the convoy or its passengers are actually furthering avoidable death and war.

P.S.:  I'm just too angry to write more right now. My friend Bookie has a good roundup. She points us to this that if President Obama plays his usual games of currying favors, which are not returned by any to whom he has, he will speed and impel Israel to take its survival in its own hands. PowerLine also has proportionate sense to offer: don't "bring a toy gun to a knife fight." AllahPundit wonders about the immediate convening of the UN Security Council to condemn Israel, compared to it not meeting when North Korea torpedoed and sunk a South Korean ship. See Useful Idiots At Sea and other posts at Contentions.