===
This from a very dear and bright friend of mine.
"I went to Costco on my way home, and stopped in for some staples. I passed by the books and asked the sales clerk straightening the books if she had the Krauthammer book.
"Things That Matter," I replied.
Another person browsing the books, but obviously listening, decided she wanted to pick a fight at that point and said, "What does he know about that?"
I am constantly amazed at how angry the Left gets when their ideas are challenged. I think we are coming into a time when the Left is going to be, in the words of Marvin the Martian, VERY ANGRY as it becomes clear that:
Millions -- probably tens of millions -- will lose access to health care in the coming months, and it will become clearer than ever Democrats are dumb as a box of rocks. The media fawned over the Obamaplans for the past five years are not even as smart as a box of rocks.
Charles Krauthammer famously said that all Democrats think Republicans are evil and all Republicans think Democrats are dumb. Count me out. I think Democrats can be both dumb and evil. And we are about to see is just how evil they are. "
My friend knows I believe many liberals are humorless and when pressed to explain their ideas or why their policies fail they get angry, accusative and abusive.
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I did not write this but I concur.
Obama's hubris and politics is getting in the way of common sense.
What Obama and Democrats conceived has proven disastrous because it is unworkable, too costly and too complex. Rather than admit being wrong, Obama first blamed the insurance industry and now Republicans. The fact that no Republican voted for his program is a fact he hopes escapes the unwashed.
The White House is doing its best to put on a happy face, get the president out among the public talking abut how good everything will be in time but it is not working because the unwashed finally realize Obama lied to them and does not know what he is doing.
Obama told the unwashed big government was good and works and it is not and does not. He told them he had the answer to their unemployment problems if we just taxed the rich and that has not worked. He then told them he knew how to handle foreign affairs and proceeded to apologize for our nation's exceptional-ism and that boomeranged.
Now Obama basically shoved the Egyptian army into the 'arms' of Russia, scared the Saudis and made Israel throw up their hands in utter despair over his naivete. France, yes France, has shown more moxie than America and folks, that takes some doing!
Everything Obama touches he makes worse, most everything he tries he louses up and the polls are beginning to reflect the public's discontent and utter disgust.
Yes, I have been on his case since the git go and yes, it is nice to finally have company but I never wanted to see Obama fail I simply never thought he would succeed.(See 1 below.)
It now appears job numbers might have been manipulated prior to the election and GE's former Chairman was scalded for expressing his suspicions. I do not understand why anyone is surprised about this Administration when one focuses on who Obama's political play mates have been and you can start with Alinsky and continue to Wright!
One disgrace and lie after the other - NSA, IRS, Justice Department, Benghazi, Libya, Syria and the list seems endless
But then what difference does it matter!
===
Hypocrisy courses through every vein of the U.N. (See 2 below.)
===
I read both Netanyahu and Putin's remarks before and after their meeting. They were a bunch of platitudes but I guess that is what diplomacy dictates.
In order to learn what their real discussions were about and how they went you have to be a fly on the wall. (See 3 below.)
===
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I did not write this but I concur.
Obama's hubris and politics is getting in the way of common sense.
What Obama and Democrats conceived has proven disastrous because it is unworkable, too costly and too complex. Rather than admit being wrong, Obama first blamed the insurance industry and now Republicans. The fact that no Republican voted for his program is a fact he hopes escapes the unwashed.
The White House is doing its best to put on a happy face, get the president out among the public talking abut how good everything will be in time but it is not working because the unwashed finally realize Obama lied to them and does not know what he is doing.
Obama told the unwashed big government was good and works and it is not and does not. He told them he had the answer to their unemployment problems if we just taxed the rich and that has not worked. He then told them he knew how to handle foreign affairs and proceeded to apologize for our nation's exceptional-ism and that boomeranged.
Now Obama basically shoved the Egyptian army into the 'arms' of Russia, scared the Saudis and made Israel throw up their hands in utter despair over his naivete. France, yes France, has shown more moxie than America and folks, that takes some doing!
Everything Obama touches he makes worse, most everything he tries he louses up and the polls are beginning to reflect the public's discontent and utter disgust.
Yes, I have been on his case since the git go and yes, it is nice to finally have company but I never wanted to see Obama fail I simply never thought he would succeed.(See 1 below.)
It now appears job numbers might have been manipulated prior to the election and GE's former Chairman was scalded for expressing his suspicions. I do not understand why anyone is surprised about this Administration when one focuses on who Obama's political play mates have been and you can start with Alinsky and continue to Wright!
One disgrace and lie after the other - NSA, IRS, Justice Department, Benghazi, Libya, Syria and the list seems endless
But then what difference does it matter!
===
Hypocrisy courses through every vein of the U.N. (See 2 below.)
===
I read both Netanyahu and Putin's remarks before and after their meeting. They were a bunch of platitudes but I guess that is what diplomacy dictates.
In order to learn what their real discussions were about and how they went you have to be a fly on the wall. (See 3 below.)
===
Dick
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1)
Daniel Henninger: Worse Than ObamaCare
Obama's biggest failure is that he hobbled the U.S. economy.
The ObamaCare train wreck is plowing through the White House in super slow-mo on screens everywhere, splintering reputations and presidential approval ratings. Audiences watch popeyed as Democrats in distress like Senators Kay Hagan, Mary Landrieu and Mark Pryor decide whether to cling to the driverless train or jump toward the tall weeds. The heartless compilers of the Washington Post/ABC poll asked people to pick a head-to-head matchup now between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Mitt won. This is the most amazing spectacle of mayhem and meltdown anyone has seen in politics since Watergate.
No question, it's tough on Barack Obama. But what about the rest of us? For many Americans, the Obama leadership meltdown began five years ago.
In fall 2008, the U.S. suffered its worst financial crisis since the Depression. That wasn't Barack Obama's fault. But five years on, in the fall of 2013, the country's economy is still sick.
Unemployed middle-aged men look in the mirror and see someone who may never work again. Young married couples who should be on the way up are living in their parents' basement. Many young black men (official unemployment rate 28%; unofficial rate off the charts) have no prospect of work.
Washington these days kvetches a lot about what Healthcare.gov is doing to the Obama "legacy." Far worse than ObamaCare, though, is that the 44th president in his second term presides over a great nation that is punching so far below its weight that large swaths of its people have lost heart.
Getty Images
For five years, news stories have chronicled the social and economic deterioration in America of people with no jobs or weak jobs.
Here's a headline over a Gallup report: "In U.S. Fewer Believe 'Plenty of Opportunity' to Get Ahead."
Two from The Wall Street Journal recently: "Parents Serving as Emergency Support for Adult Kids," and "Workers Stay Put, Curbing Jobs Engine."
On Tuesday, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development put out a report saying the U.S. has become a threat to global recovery. The OECD ratcheted down growth estimates almost everywhere for the rest of this year. For the euro-zone nations: -0.4%; for "emerging" India it's down to 3%; South Korea: 2.7%.
As to the U.S., the OECD says growth for the rest of the year will fall back to 1.7%. That is about the average rate of U.S. economic growth for the entire Obama presidency.
Barack Obama is not the original cause of so much economic misfortune. He didn't create an advanced U.S. economy in which the highest income returns flow to math geeks who snag jobs at Facebook FB +0.15% and Google, GOOG -0.28% while average people wonder what hit them. The shift away from traditional manufacturing began before he was organizing anyone back in Chicago. And yes, Mr. Obama has talked of the plight of "middle-class folks" from the first days of his presidency. But what has his presidency done for them? What is there to show for all the talk?
In February 2009, he got $831 billion of stimulus spending. Not even seismographs can detect the results. Every speech he outputs about "middle-class folks" offers them the same solutions: more public spending on education, on public infrastructure projects and, even now, on alternative energy. As he tirelessly repeats what remain promises, the Labor Department's monthly unemployment-rate announcement on Friday mornings has become a day of dread.
A normal post-recession growth rate of at least 4% would have made it possible for Mr. Obama and his progressive allies to chase virtually any pie-in-the-sky policy they wanted. Instead, the U.S. has fallen far off its normal 3.3% growth rate.
A U.S. president, faced with such devastating labor-market problems and persistently weak growth, should do anything—anything—that will give the American workplace more lift. Instead, he's willing to entertain just one idea: more federal spending.
You know the theory here: Spend a public dollar and you get $1.50 of economic output. It hasn't happened, but Barack Obama is gonna crank his old Keynesian Multiplier, created during the 1930s in the era of the Hupmobile, until it sputters to life.
Ponder, though, a partial list of the public-policy decisions that have flowed steadily out of the Obama administration and directly into a job-starved U.S. economy:
The no-decision on the Keystone XL pipeline and its union jobs; the 2,000-page regulatory law draped in 2010 across the entire financial sector; the shutdown in 2010 and then the slow-walking of offshore oil drilling; siccing the EPA on the utilities industry and the National Labor Relations Board on all industry; a 2010 FCC decision to regulate Internet growth; a significant tax increase this year; support this month for jacking up the federal minimum wage to over $10, certain to smother new jobs; the Justice Department's $13 billion looting of J.P. Morgan JPM -0.09% bank; and of course Hurricane ObamaCare.
Barack Obama has the U.S. economy on lockdown. It's the worst thing this president has done. American resilience, and elections, mean it won't stay this way forever. But for a lot of poor and middle-class folks, living with mom in the basement is getting old.
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2)Why is Access to UN Headquarters Being Controlled by
UN Palestinian Rights Division? .American taxpayers have now paid over half a billion dollars to renovate
United Nations Headquarters in New York City. And guess who is controlling
access to the meeting rooms? The UN Division for Palestinian Rights.
On Friday, November 15, 2013, an official UN-accredited Jewish
non-governmental organization had its security clearance to attend an open
UN meeting in New York revoked just because the UN staff dedicated to all
things Palestinian said so.
A group of 18 Birthright Israel alumni had been invited to witness "UN Day
of Solidarity with the Palestinian People" by the UN-accredited Touro
Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust.
The annual occasion is the apex of the UN's Israel-bashing calendar.
Evidently, the prospect of pro-Israel Jewish observers was too much for UN
officials to bear. The UN Charter's promise of "the equal rights of men and
women and of nations large and small, be damned.
The annual event, which this year will be held on November 25, marks
November 29, 1947 - the day that the UN General Assembly adopted a
resolution which partitioned Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state.
It was a resolution accepted by Jews and rejected across the Arab world. It
was also a day celebrated by the victims of the Nazis and the Jewish people
in their ancient homeland and around the world.
At the UN, however, it's been downhill ever since.
Former Secretary-General Kofi Annan characterized Solidarity Day as "a day
of mourning and a day of grief," and every year under UN auspices, member
states and NGOs gather to mourn the creation of the Jewish state.
This year, the admission passes of the Jewish NGO group had been officially
approved, security clearance had been granted, and the passes were scheduled
to be picked up. That is, until UN security official Lt. Paul Jankowsky,
reversed course and unilaterally decided that the Chief of the UN
Palestinian rights division, Wolfgang Grieger, had a veto over who could
attend.
The November 15 message sent to the Touro Institute from Jankowsky reads:
"the Division for Palestinian Rights...are the meeting organizers....The
organizers instruct me not to issue additional passes that they did not
request."
Jankowsky and Grieger's interference occurred despite the fact that the
meeting was clearly advertised on the UN's own website with the unequivocal
statement: "NGOs are invited to attend."
Furthermore, an open invitation announcing the date, time and place had been
advertised with no restrictions of any kind in the UN's Daily Journal of the
very same day, November 15.
Given that the campaign to exclude Jewish groups which support Israel from
attending UN meetings is a direct violation of the UN Charter, a letter was
sent to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon requesting that he require his
staff to adhere to the UN's founding principles.
But the Secretary-General has apparently been too busy to respond. He's been
in Auschwitz this week conveying his heartfelt opposition to discrimination
against Jews.
One might think that the other party which ought to be interested in
overturning the UN-Palestinian takeover of UN premises is the US Mission to
the United Nations. And indeed, a letter was sent to US Ambassador to the UN
Samantha Power. But she has not responded to either a letter or phone call.
Palestinian Solidarity Day is a big deal at the UN. Speeches in New York are
given by each of the President of the General Assembly, the President of the
Security Council and the Secretary-General.
Also present are NGOs.
The kind that make the cut are the likes of extremist Roger Waters. He
formally represented "civil society" at last year's event and was handed a
microphone. He then accused Israel of "ethnic cleansing," voiced his support
for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaigns, claimed "Hamas is
open to permanent peace with Israel," and even demanded that the General
Assembly terminate the membership of Israel from the UN until its "illegal
apartheid regime" ends.
Despite marking an event calling for an Arab and a Jewish state, the UN
chamber where the event is held is always decorated with only the flag of
"Palestine." The Israeli flag is banished. There isn't anything subtle about
UN Palestinian Solidarity Day.
The conveners - the UN states that are members of the "Committee on the
Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People" - have
successfully ratcheted up the festivities year-after-year. "Art" shows,
musicians, films, dance troupes, all at the UN and all with the same
recurring theme: the demonic depiction of the Jewish state and absolution
for Palestinian intolerance and violence.
Organizers are so pleased by the unimpeded anti-Semitism, that this year
they have forwarded a resolution to the General Assembly - expected to be
adopted next week - "proclaiming 2014 the International Year of Solidarity
with the Palestinian People." According to the resolution, the General
Assembly "would request the Committee to organize activities to be held
during the Year."
Looks like excluding Jews 24/7 from events at UN Headquarters is just around
the corner.
Anne Bayefsky is director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the
Holocaust
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3)At odds with ally Washington over an emerging nuclear agreement with Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will on Wednesday take his campaign against the deal to Moscow.
3)At odds with ally Washington over an emerging nuclear agreement with Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will on Wednesday take his campaign against the deal to Moscow.
Russia is a member of the P5+1 group -- alongside the United States, China, France, Britain and Germany -- which has been struggling to reach a deal to freeze or curb Iran's nuclear activities in exchange for some relief from international sanctions.
Israel is staunchly opposed to the mooted interim agreement, insisting it will give Iran vital sanctions relief while failing to halt Tehran's alleged march towards a "breakout" nuclear weapons capability.
Israel is staunchly opposed to the mooted interim agreement, insisting it will give Iran vital sanctions relief while failing to halt Tehran's alleged march towards a "breakout" nuclear weapons capability.
"We'd like (the Russians) to have a better understanding of our concerns and the need to prevent Iran from having a breakout capacity," an Israeli official told AFP ahead of the trip.
"A breakout capacity means that they have the capability to develop a nuclear weapon at a time and a place of their choosing in the future."
Chavosh Homavandi/Jamejamonline/AFP
Iranian students set an Israeli flag on fire during a protest to defend their country's nuclear program outside the Fordo Uranium Conversion Facility in Qom, in the north of the country, on November 19, 2013
The P5+1 will meet with Iran on Wednesday in Geneva for talks on the nuclear programme, which Israel and the West suspect is aimed at developing a weapons capability but Tehran insists is entirely peaceful.
The last round of talks with Iran, which ended on November 10, came tantalisingly close to a framework agreement that supporters say would bolster Iran's new president, a reputed moderate, and buy time for negotiating a comprehensive agreement.
Moscow has expressed hope the differences could be ironed out, with President Vladimir Putin telling his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani on Monday that "a real chance has now emerged for finding a solution to this longstanding problem."
US Secretary of State John Kerry has also expressed hope for a "first-step" agreement that "can prove to the world that this is a peaceful programme."
Netanyahu vehemently opposes the proposed deal, which he says would prematurely ease sanctions against Iran without getting it to halt uranium enrichment or stop work on a heavy-water reactor.
"You are not really dismantling any capacity to make fissile material for nuclear weapons," he said in an interview published in top-selling German daily Bild on Tuesday.
Atta Kenare/AFP/File
A picture taken on August 26, 2006 shows a general view of the heavy water plant in Arak, 320 kms south of Tehran
"Iran gets to keep all its centrifuges. Thousands of them. It makes a minor concession that it can reverse in weeks. And what are the P5+1 giving Iran? They are giving it reduced sanctions which could very quickly lead to the crumbling of the entire sanctions regime."
'Divorced from reality'
Netanyahu raised the issue this week with visiting French President Francois Hollande, who assured him that France "will not tolerate nuclear proliferation."
But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has made clear he finds Netanyahu's barbs off the mark, saying "certain critical statements" on the mooted agreement were "divorced from reality."
"Those who suspect Russian, American and other participants of the process" of allowing dangerous loopholes in the agreement are "disrespecting our intellectual capacities and our political principles," he told state-run media on Monday.
The visit comes amid a growing US diplomatic vacuum in the Middle East, stemming from Washington's lack of will to flex its muscles in the wake of costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Khaled Desouki/AFP/File
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (R) talks with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu before meeting with Egypt’s interim president on November 14, 2013 at the presidential palace in Cairo
Moscow appears keen to fill that void -- an impression which was reinforced last week when Lavrov and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu went to Cairo for a visit devoted to military and diplomatic ties.
Netanyahu's opposition to the nuclear deal and his public spat with Kerry over the matter have sparked warnings that it could turn into a diplomatic boomerang for Israel.
Some suggest Netanyahu may be seeking to play the Kremlin off against the White House, saying that to do so would be a mistake.
"I very much hope that he will not try such an exercise," said Amnon Sela, international relations expert from Jerusalem's Hebrew University.
"He has already taken some steps which are very harmful to Israel, with his opposition to President (Barack) Obama and trying to enlist (US) public opinion and Congress against the president."
Israel, the region's sole if undeclared nuclear-armed state, has refused to rule out military action to halt Iran's nuclear drive. Washington has also insisted it will strike if necessary to prevent Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon.
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