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Dagny takes her first spin around the garage!
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Not shocking at all! (See 2 below.)
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Computer idea on how to start each day and feel good! (See 3 below.)
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The unaffordable Health Care Act (See 4 and 4a below.)
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Will Israel be forced to commit 'Hari Kerry? " (See 5 below.)
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Dick
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1)Obama's Red-Line Presidency
The next president will have to restore the tradition of durable U.S. foreign commitments.
By Daniel Henninger
'We have communicated in no uncertain terms with every player in the region that that's a red line for us and that there would be enormous consequences if we start seeing movement on the chemical weapons front or the use of chemical weapons."— Barack Obama, Aug. 20, 2012
"First of all, if you've got health insurance, you like your doctors, you like your plan, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan. Nobody is talking about taking that away from you."—Barack Obama, multiple versions
What would you rather be: an American lost inside an ObamaCare exchange or a Syrian rebel? No matter who gets touched by the helping hand of Barack Obama, the problem is not merely the broken promise but the chaos that follows the break.
Start with ObamaCare. When Mr. Obama addressed the nonperformance ofHealthCare.gov, here's one of the things he said: "What we're also discovering is that insurance is complicated to buy."
Related Video
Wonder Land columnist Dan Henninger on a new poll showing that young people are no longer so enthusiastic about the president and his signature health-care law. Photo credit: Getty Images.
Come again? You're discovering this? It sounds as if ObamaCare was sprung over beer-and-pretzels by a bunch of guys watching hoops at the White House.
The one group of people in the world who would believe this is how ObamaCare came to life would be the Syrian rebels. They also got hit by a glitch.
In August, Bashar Assad gassed and killed some 1,400 people, many children. He crossed the famous Obama "red line." John Kerry, Susan Rice and Samantha Power gave powerful speeches about the need to respond. Policy makers in Washington, Paris, Riyadh, Jerusalem and Damascus expected the U.S. to hit Assad's air-force assets.
Didn't happen. Mr. Obama pivoted to Russian President Vladimir Putin's idea that Assad would let his cache of chemical weapons be destroyed.
The first tangible result of this post-red-line deal was that the Syrian civil war evaporated from the news. The war didn't stop; it vanished.
The Wall Street Journal this week reported an update on the Obama-Putin deal to destroy Assad's murderous chemicals. It made one blink in disbelief. No country in the world is willing to dispose of Assad's chemical weapons on its territory. Too dangerous. So on Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend the Obama White House put out Plan B.
Martin Kozlowski
It's somehow going to move the most lethal chemicals—mustard gas, sarin, VX—to a ship outfitted "with field deployable hydrolysis system technology," sail out onto the ocean somewhere and destroy the stuff with neutralizing caustic chemicals. Where are the save-the-whales people when you need them? Even the ocean has to take the fall for another Obama policy lurch.
Mr. Obama has now committed the U.S. to another major project: slowing or ending (it's hard to tell which exactly) Iran's nuclear-bomb program. Here Mr. Obama decided he would largely dismantle the economic sanctions regime against Iran. This was an international red line painstakingly assembled over 10 years. It was working. Three days before Mr. Obama announced the interim deal, the National Iranian Gas Co. declared bankruptcy.
Rather than let the mullahs deal with the rising stress of economic disintegration, Mr. Obama replaced the sanctions with his own negotiating red line: a six-month moratorium, which is "reversible."
It wouldn't matter if Team Obama was improvising policy with things no one cares about, say, wrecking a bank. But skateboarding through the U.S. health-insurance system or America's foreign-policy commitments can produce broad-based ruin.
The U.S.'s postwar system of foreign alliances is cracking, or even collapsing.
Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally since the 1930s, is now openly derisive of the president. Egypt's military government just announced an era of "historic strategic relations" with Russia. Israel calls the Iran initiative a "historic mistake." What all these American allies have in common is that their insurance agreements with the U.S. have been canceled. But no worries; it'll be replaced with something "better."
The famous Obama "pivot" toward Asia has gone slack. Vice President Joe Biden is now visiting Japan, China and South Korea—and not only because of China's multiple claims to hegemony over the region's waters.
As with Russia in the Middle East, China's top leaders exploited Mr. Obama's hither-and-thither foreign policy. When the president skipped two Asian-nation summits in October (blaming the government shutdown morass), China's attending leadership proposed an array of economic cooperation plans for the region.
This is a troubled moment in the U.S.'s relations with the world. What's missing, astonishingly, is a sustained Republican voice on foreign policy. The Democrats carpet-bombed George Bush because he was so unpopular in places like Sweden. The GOP's major figures look frozen in the headlights of opinion polls that put isolationist sentiment above 50%. This vacuum of ideas will default the commander-in-chief issue in 2016 to the only candidate who was formerly secretary of state.
It's looking to the world outside our borders as if America's red lines can be blurred, moved or erased at whim. The next president will have to restore the idea of a U.S. commitment to its original, more durable meaning.
1a)White House prepared to allow limited Iran nuclear enrichment
By Jim Acosta
The Obama administration is prepared to allow Iran to engage in a “limited enrichment program” if Tehran holds up its end of an international agreement to curtail its nuclear capabilities under stringent global oversight, the White House confirmed Tuesday.
“We are prepared to negotiate a strictly limited enrichment program,” Obama administration national security spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said in a statement.
“But only because the Iranians have indicated for the first time in a public document that they are prepared to accept rigorous monitoring and limits on level, scope, capacity, and stockpiles,” the statement added.
Meehan cautioned the administration's agreement to any limited enrichment program in Iran applies only to that nation's peaceful energy “needs” and does not amount to U.S. recognition of an Iranian “right to enrich.”
The White House statement was in large part a reaction to questions raised about an international agreement brokered last month with Iran over its nuclear program.
“We have accepted Iranian uranium enrichment,” retired Gen. Michael Hayden, a former CIA director, told Fox News Sunday when asked about the deal reached between Iran and the United States, Britain, China, Russia, France and Germany.
Meehan said any limited enrichment program in Iran would still be subject to the approval of those so-called “P5+1″ nations.
“If we can reach an understanding on all of these strict constraints, then we can have an arrangement that includes a very modest amount of enrichment that is tied to Iran's actual needs and that eliminates any near-term breakout capability,” Meehan said in the statement.
Asked about Iran's uranium enrichment ambitions, which the United States and others fear could lead to the development of a nuclear bomb, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said President Obama believes Iran “has the right to peaceful nuclear energy.”
“What the President has also made clear is that he is adamantly opposed to and will not allow for Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon, and that is the threat that has been posed by Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions,” Carney said.
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2)Palestinians Seek to Cancel Half of Debt Owed to Israel Electric Corp.
3)
4) Team Obama Takes "Affordable" Out of Latest Obamacare Campaign
By Katie Pavlich
4a) The Best Political Ad for 2014
By Bruce Walker
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/12/the_best_political_ad_for_2014.html#ixzz2mkGRkxqV
Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook
Barry promised a zillion times on camera that Americans under ObamaCare would be able to keep their health care insurance if they liked it, that they would be able to keep the same doctors, and so on. Were these lies?
There is, however, another message that Republicans should play at the same time -- a more important message. Democrats are in utterly over their heads in trying to handle health care, or any other important issue for our country. In March 2010, Speaker Pelosi, who many commentators have noted is an embarrassment to the high office she held, made this statement about ObamaCare to a conference of local government officers: "But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what's in it[.]"
5)The Politics of Subversion
US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Israel on Wednesday bearing gifts. Stripped of the smiles and promises, he attempted to assert additional pressure on Israel.. on self-destruct
US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Israel on Wednesday to put additional pressure on Israel to make more concessions in land and political rights to the PLO in Judea and Samaria. To advance his current effort, Kerry brought along retired US Marine General John Allen.
The fact that the likes of Olmert, Livni, Diskin and Herzog and their followers are not at the forefront pressuring the Palestinians to change their ways and demanding that the Obama administration demonstrate its trustworthiness, but rather have directed all their energies to attacking the government, indicates that peace with the Palestinians is not their primary concern.
2)Palestinians Seek to Cancel Half of Debt Owed to Israel Electric Corp.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------By - Avi Bar-Eli
In a letter to the Israeli government, PA Finance Minister Shukri Bishara requested that half of its $300 million debt to the Israel Electric Corporation be forgiven, with repayment of the remaining $150 million spread over a period of 20 years.
The Palestinians' debt to the IEC has ballooned over the years because the PA fails to collect money from customers. In addition, many users steal electricity through illegal hookups.
As a result, according to Israeli sources, Palestinians have grown accustomed to not paying for electricity.
3)
HOW TO START EACH DAY WITH A POSITIVE
OUTLOOK
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4) Team Obama Takes "Affordable" Out of Latest Obamacare Campaign
By Katie Pavlich
President Obama hit the campaign trail again this week in an effort to reboot support for Obamacare as the failed rollout continues with a broken website and broken promises.Speaking from the White HouseTuesday, Obama declared "Obamacare is working," and that we "aren't going back." But for Obamacare to truly be "working" for the American people as promised when the Affordable Care Act was passed, it must in fact be affordable. We've seen the opposite. Young people will pay double under the ACA, young women will see their health insurance premiums increase on average by 193 percent and five million Americans have lost their coverage only to find plans under Obamacare are more expensive for less care.As the public relations campaign for a law that is unaffordable rolls on, Byron York has noticed something: the administration is no longer talking about Obamacare in terms of affordability.One of the left's key tactics is to change language in order to reach a final political goal. We see this all the time on nearly every single issue. The fact that the White House sees a need to eliminate talk of affordability under Obamacare proves yet again the law was sold to the public on a lie. Obamacare wasn't affordable before it was passed, it isn't affordable now and it will never be affordable. Regardless, a Democratic controlled Congress with support from a Democratic president officially named Obamacare The Affordable Care Act anyway.
4a) The Best Political Ad for 2014
By Bruce Walker
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/12/the_best_political_ad_for_2014.html#ixzz2mkGRkxqV
Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook
Barry promised a zillion times on camera that Americans under ObamaCare would be able to keep their health care insurance if they liked it, that they would be able to keep the same doctors, and so on. Were these lies?
Obama and his flacks seem incapable to saying that the president lied to the American people. There is a possibility that Orwell's future, in which members of the Inner Party (i.e., the cadres of leftism) actually believe their daily incarnation of party truth. "Doublethink" was Orwell's term for this sort of communicative cognitive disease, which allowed Inner Party members to hold two utterly incompatible beliefs at the same time.
So would the best GOP campaign ads next year be videos of Obama or hapless Democrats like Mary Landrieu in the Louisiana Senate race stating the obviously broken promises mouthed to gain passage of ObamaCare? Certainly the Republican Party should remind voters that Democrats cannot be trusted to tell the truth when they make solemn promises to the American people.
Democrat leftism in America has been propped up so long by the establishment media, by corrupt labor unions, and by that vast gray army of bureaucrats and academicians connected with a huge umbilical cord through which flow billions of dollars in salaries and benefits that whatever modest competence the left in American once possessed has long since vanished. Those who mouth the politically correct rhetoric are always right, which accounts for the dull and repetitive responses of Obama and his friends to the grim news about broken promises, pathetic websites, and nonexistent cyber-security.
The leaders of the Democrat Party are profoundly dumb folks. American Thinker contributors have noted in past articles that Obama, when the teleprompter is off, is a very ordinary mind, reflecting the most grotesque results of perpetual affirmative action nudging this nebbish from an average student, a very common state senator, and a United States senator of no accomplishments at all into the leader of the free world.
Anyone who listens for more than a few moments to Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi quickly learns just how very limited both of them are in handling anything more than a tough game of checkers. Trying to nail mendacity on Democrats -- when American voters wisely surmise that almost every politician who makes it to Washington and stays there long lies -- will not move nearly as many voters as the prospect of leaving the republic in the hands of woefully incompetent politicians like Pelosi, who was doubtless being quite candid when she said that Congress ought to pass the bill first and then fish around in the entrails of this legislative monstrosity to try to discern what ObamaCare had in store for America.
Pelosi's notoriously honest statement fits in perfectly with the grand theme of the ObamaCare rollout. The website did not work and is now considered to work when it approaches what the private sector would have produced every time the first time. The private and confidential information of millions of Americans seems naked before the prying eyes of criminals and creeps. Everything promised has failed, and part of this is the normal Washingtonian duplicity -- but most of it is from Democrat haplessness, which is all we can expect from a political party composed of lawyers, government officials, union bosses, toady journalists, and otherworldly academicians.
Next November, Republican political ads from coast to coast should say something like this: "The leaders of the Democratic Party are doing the very best they can. That is the problem our nation faces today: that Democrat leaders are doing the best that they can. We cannot expect them to fix the problems they have created or the other problems our nation will face. Only a RepublicanCongress can fix ObamaCare, and only the American people can vote in that Congress this November."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------5)The Politics of Subversion
By Caroline B. Glick
US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Israel on Wednesday bearing gifts. Stripped of the smiles and promises, he attempted to assert additional pressure on Israel.. on self-destruct
US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Israel on Wednesday to put additional pressure on Israel to make more concessions in land and political rights to the PLO in Judea and Samaria. To advance his current effort, Kerry brought along retired US Marine General John Allen.
According to media reports, Allen presented a proposal to address Israel's security concerns and so enable the talks about Israeli land giveaways to proceed apace. The proposal involved, among other things, American security guarantees, a pledge to deploy US forces along the Jordan River, and additional US military assistance to the IDF.
These Obama administration proposals are supposed to allay Israeli concerns that withdrawing Israeli forces from the Jordan Valley and the international border crossings with Jordan will invite foreign invasion and aggression, and increased Palestinian terrorism.
By controlling the Jordan Valley, (and the Samarian and Hebron mountain ranges), Israel is capable of defending the country from invasion from the east. It can also prevent penetration of irregular enemy forces, and on the other hand, maintain the stability of the Hashemite regime in Jordan. Without control over the areas, Israel can do none of these things.
Facing these undeniable facts, Kerry and his supporters have two main challenges. First they need to present themselves as credible actors. And second they have to give Israel reason to trust the Palestinians. If Israel trusts the US, then it can consider allowing the US to defend it from foreign aggression. If the Palestinians are real peace partners, then Israel can surrender its ability to defend itself more easily, because it will face a benign neighbor along its indefensible border.
Unfortunately, Israel cannot trust the US. Kerry and the Obama administration as a whole lost all credibility when they negotiated the deal with Iran last month.
After spending five years promising they had Israel's back only to stab Israel in the back in relation to the most acute threat facing the Jewish state, nothing Kerry or US President Barack Obama says in relation to their commitment to Israel's security can be trusted. The fact that Kerry had the nerve to show up here with "security guarantees" regarding the Palestinians two weeks after he agreed to effectively unravel the sanctions regime against Iran in exchange for no concrete Iranian concessions on its nuclear arms program shows that he holds Israel in contempt.
But then, even if Kerry had all the credibility in the world it wouldn't make a difference. The real problem with the notion of an Israeli withdrawal to indefensible borders is that those indefensible borders will be insecure. Both the PLO and Hamas remain committed to Israel's destruction. They will never agree to Israel's continued existence in any borders. So the whole peace process is doomed. Kerry's attempt to dictate security arrangements is a waste of time.
This much was again made clear last Friday by the PLO's chief negotiator Saeb Erekat. Speaking to foreign supporters, Erekat said that the Palestinians will never accept Israel's right to exist. Their entire existence as a people is predicated on denying Jewish rights and nationhood. And, as Erekat put it, "I cannot change my narrative."
The people who should be most upset both about Obama and Kerry's destruction of US strategic credibility and about the utter absence of Palestinian good faith should be the Israelis wedded to the two-state paradigm. Former prime minister Ehud Olmert, former Shin Bet director Yuval Diskin, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, and Labor Party leader Issac Herzog among others, should be so vocal in their opposition to the deal with Iran that they make Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu look like a pushover.
It is they, not Netanyahu and his voters who have insisted that Israel can make massive concessions to the PLO and sit on the sidelines with regard to Iran because the US will defend us. For the past generation it was they, not the political Right that preached strategic dependency rather than strategic sovereignty.
These peaceniks, rather than Likud supporters should also be the ones leading the charge against PLO support for terrorism, incitement against Israel and rejection of Israel's right to exist. The Right never wanted a Palestinian state to begin with. That's the Left's policy. If Netanyahu abandoned his support for Palestinian statehood, he would become more popular, not less so. And unless Palestinian society and the Palestinian leadership fundamentally transform their position on Israel, there is no way that Israel can be expected to surrender its ability to defend itself. There is no way that Israel can consider the PLO's territorial demands. And there is no way a Palestinian state can be established.
But the peaceniks don't seem to care about these things.
Olmert uses every open microphone to attack Netanyahu. Last week Olmert went so far as to say that Netanyahu, "declared war on the American government," by openly criticizing the deal with Iran. Despite the fact that PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas didn't even respond to Olmert's peace offer in 2008, Olmert places all the blame for the absence of peace on Netanyahu and his government.
For his part, on the eve of Kerry's visit Diskin launched an equally unhinged attack on the government. Speaking to the European funded pro-Palestinian Geneva Initiative, Diskin claimed wildly that Israel is more at risk from not surrendering to PLO demands than from an Iranian nuclear arsenal.
Last month Livni attacked Netanyahu for criticizing Obama's deal with Iran and then claimed vapidly that Israel will protect itself from Iran by giving away its land to the PLO. Ignoring the fact that the Arab world is already siding with Israel against Iran, Livni said, "Solving the conflict with the Palestinians would enable a united front with Arab countries against Iran."
This week newly elected Labor Party chief Issac Herzog went to Ramallah and chastised the government. Praising Abbas for his "real desire to achieve peace," while remaining silent about Abbas's daily statements in support of terrorism, Herzog pledged "to try to put pressure on the Israeli government to take brave positions to achieve peace and security for our children."
As for the deal with Iran, shortly after his election to head the Labor Party last month, Herzog lashed out not at the deal, and not at Obama for betraying his pledge to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power, but at Netanyahu. Netanyahu, he claimed, "has harmed our relations with the US and hasn't brought about an improved agreement."
Ignoring the fact that the Obama administration negotiated with Iran behind Israel's back and then lied about the contents of what it had agreed to, Herzog seethed, Netanyahu "has created a total lack of trust between us and Obama rather than a trusting relationship."
As polls taken over the past twenty years have shown, a majority of Israelis would be happy to make peace with the Palestinians, and pay a price in territory for doing so. But those polls have also shown that the public believes the Palestinians when they say they want to destroy the Jewish state. The Israeli public does not think people like Abbas, who praise mass murderers of Jews as national heroes, have "a real desire to achieve peace."
And, as recent polls show, following the US deal with Iran, while the public continues to prize Israel's alliance with the US, it no longer trusts the US government.
The fact that the likes of Olmert, Livni, Diskin and Herzog and their followers are not at the forefront pressuring the Palestinians to change their ways and demanding that the Obama administration demonstrate its trustworthiness, but rather have directed all their energies to attacking the government, indicates that peace with the Palestinians is not their primary concern.
Rather it would appear that their main concern is their personal power and prestige.
By siding with the Americans against the government, these senior figures seek to exploit the public's support for the US. By presenting Netanyahu as anti-American, and claiming that he is responsible for Obama's abusive behavior, they hope to convince the public to embrace them as guarantors of the strategic alliance. Certainly that is Olmert's goal as he looks past his criminal prosecutions and begins to plot his course back to the center of power.
As for their support for the Palestinians against their government, here the motivation is external. Israelis do not trust the Palestinians. And they certainly do not trust Abbas. But the Americans and Europeans have made Palestinian statehood the centerpiece of their foreign policies and view Abbas as the indispensable man.
Livni had no political future after she lost the Kadima party primary to Shaul Mofaz last year. Her hopes of becoming Prime Minister had ended. But then she went to Washington, met with Hillary Clinton, and announced she was forming a new party and running on a pro-Palestinian, pro-Obama platform. She won a paltry six seats, which she took from other leftist parties.
But that was enough. Bowing to US pressure to prove he was serious about appeasing the Palestinians, Netanyahu appointed Livni Justice Minister and put her in charge of the talks with the PLO. If Livni had been less supportive of Obama or of the PLO, she would not be where she is today.
If the behavior of these people were just a matter of shameless jockeying for political power their actions would be bad enough. But they cause immeasurable damage to the country.
By accusing Netanyahu of blocking peace between Israel and the Palestinians, they embolden the Palestinians to escalate their political warfare against Israel, and maintain their steady anti-Semitic incitement. Indeed they lay the moral groundwork for justifying terrorism against Israel.
Livni, Olmert, Diskin, Herzog and their allies also give political cover to outside forces to adopt anti-Israel positions and policies. Why shouldn't the European Union boycott Israeli goods when the former prime minister claims that Israel is the reason there is no peace? Why should Obama care what Netanyahu tells Congress when Olmert says Netanyahu is at war with the US? How can Israel justify attacking Iran's nuclear installations when Olmert says it is strategically idiotic to even train for such an attack and Diskin says that we need a PLO state more than we need to block Iran's nuclear ambitions?
Diskin's unhinged attack against Netanyahu on the eve of Kerry's visit was hardly coincidental. And we should expect more such displays as Obama becomes more open in his hostility towards Israel.
As long as we have a seemingly endless supply of senior officials willing to harm the country to advance their personal goals, domestic subversion will remain a key weapon in the international arsenal against us.
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