.jpg)
See 4d below.
===
This is a video about "clowns" who enriched the lives of those of my generation. They are no longer here but they remain wonderful memories.
Today we have a clown but he does not enrich my life, he gives me no joy. He is a dangerous embarrassment. He is Obama!
Listen to the last bit by Orson Wells. His statement is poignant and meaningful to today!
Click on: Send In The Clowns
===
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The op ed by my friend Kim Strassel, hits the nail on the head and helps to explain why she recently won the Bradley Award for her outstanding journalistic skills and insights. (See 1,1a and 1b below.)
===
Who will be right? You decide. (See , 2a and 2b below.)
===
I have not read Hilary's "Hard Choices" not am I likely to do so.
The hardest choice for her and her husband has always been telling the truth rather than spinning everything their way.
Everything about Hillary, about the Clintons, will be a replay of Obama and his protective media and print spinmeisters.
They anointed him, walked away from Hillary leaving her high and dry and now they feel it is pay back time because of their betrayal!
After Obama even Hilary could prove an improvement but then replacing cancer with AIDS is not my idea of a cure!
If America can do no better in electing leadership then our ship of state is going to take on more water ! (See 3 below.)
===
Tony Cordesman tells Israel an unsuccessful attack on Iran could greatly damage its relations with America, particularly if Israel decides any Iranian deal is bad before it is announced.
Obama has placed Israel in a difficult position because he has broken his word regarding never dealing with terrorists and now he is willingly financing Hamas. He has proven he is a weak knee leader when it comes to drawing red lines and then watching them crossed as sand was kicked in his face.
Obama has lied to his own people and just released five dangerous terrorist -war criminals and then , when pressed, acknowledged they could be a threat to our troops remaining in Afghanistan..
Israel faces its potential annihilation should Iran achieve nuclear status and then decide, either to attack itself or turn the job over to its Jihadist sponsored friends.
It is easy for Cordesman to take a detached view and he could well be correct but Israel must do what any nation must do facing the threat Iran has placed them in and nothing Obama has done to date should give Israel any comfort that he has their back. Anytime Obama tells an ally he has their back he has stabbed them. (See 4, 4a , 4b, 4c, 4d and 4e below.)
===
Kingston is gaining traction and will win both the run-off and beat Nunn's daughter.
===
Dick
Who will be right? You decide. (See , 2a and 2b below.)
===
I have not read Hilary's "Hard Choices" not am I likely to do so.
The hardest choice for her and her husband has always been telling the truth rather than spinning everything their way.
Everything about Hillary, about the Clintons, will be a replay of Obama and his protective media and print spinmeisters.
They anointed him, walked away from Hillary leaving her high and dry and now they feel it is pay back time because of their betrayal!
After Obama even Hilary could prove an improvement but then replacing cancer with AIDS is not my idea of a cure!
If America can do no better in electing leadership then our ship of state is going to take on more water ! (See 3 below.)
===
Tony Cordesman tells Israel an unsuccessful attack on Iran could greatly damage its relations with America, particularly if Israel decides any Iranian deal is bad before it is announced.
Obama has placed Israel in a difficult position because he has broken his word regarding never dealing with terrorists and now he is willingly financing Hamas. He has proven he is a weak knee leader when it comes to drawing red lines and then watching them crossed as sand was kicked in his face.
Obama has lied to his own people and just released five dangerous terrorist -war criminals and then , when pressed, acknowledged they could be a threat to our troops remaining in Afghanistan..
Israel faces its potential annihilation should Iran achieve nuclear status and then decide, either to attack itself or turn the job over to its Jihadist sponsored friends.
It is easy for Cordesman to take a detached view and he could well be correct but Israel must do what any nation must do facing the threat Iran has placed them in and nothing Obama has done to date should give Israel any comfort that he has their back. Anytime Obama tells an ally he has their back he has stabbed them. (See 4, 4a , 4b, 4c, 4d and 4e below.)
===
Kingston is gaining traction and will win both the run-off and beat Nunn's daughter.
| Race/Topic (Click to Sort) | Poll | Results | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|
| Georgia Senate - GOP Primary Runoff (July 22) | SurveyUSA | Kingston 52, Perdue 41 | Kingston +11 |
| Georgia Senate - Kingston vs. Nunn | SurveyUSA* | Nunn 37, Kingston 43 | Kingston +6 |
| Georgia Senate - Perdue vs. Nunn | SurveyUSA* | Perdue 43, Nunn 38 | Perdue +5 |
Dick
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1) Free Bowe Bergdahl, Then Court-Martial Him For Desertio
What is it with Susan Rice and the Sunday-morning talk shows? This time she said that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl had served in Afghanistan "with honor and distinction" — the biggest whopper since she insisted that the Benghazi attack was caused by a video.
There is strong eyewitness evidence that Bergdahl deserted his unit and that the search for him endangered his fellow soldiers. Otherwise, there would be no national uproar over his ransom, and some of the widely aired objections to the deal would be as muted as they are flimsy. For example:
1. America doesn't negotiate with terrorists.
Nonsense. Of course we do. Everyone does, while pretending not to. The Israelis, by necessity the toughest of all anti-terror fighters, in 2011 gave up 1,027 prisoners, some with blood on their hands, for one captured staff sergeant.
2. The administration did not give Congress 30-day notice as required by law.
Of all the jurisdictional disputes between president and Congress, the president stands on the firmest ground as commander in chief. And commanders have the power to negotiate prisoner exchanges.
Moreover, from where did this sudden assertion of congressional prerogative spring?
After five years of supine acquiescence to President Obama's multiple usurpations, Congress suddenly becomes exercised over a war power — where its claim is weakest. Congress does nothing in the face of 23 separate violations of the president's own Affordable Care Act. It does nothing when Obama essentially enacts by executive order the DREAM Act. It does nothing when the Justice Department unilaterally rewrites drug laws.
And now it rises indignantly on its hind legs because it didn't get 30 days' notice of a prisoner swap?
3. The Taliban release endangers national security.
Indeed it does. The five released detainees are unrepentant, militant and dangerous. The administration pretense that we and the Qataris will monitor them is a joke. They can start planning against us tonight. And if they decide to leave Qatar tomorrow, who's going to stop them?
The administration might have tried honesty here and said:
Yes, we gave away five important combatants. But that's what you do to redeem hostages. In such exchanges, the West always gives more than it gets for the simple reason that we value individual human life more than do the barbarians with whom we deal.
No shame here, merely a lamentable reality. So why does the Bergdahl deal so rankle?
Because of how he became captive in the first place. That's the real issue. He appears to have deserted, perhaps even defected.
The distinction is important. If he's a defector — joined the enemy to fight against his country — then he deserves no freeing. Indeed, he deserves killing, the way we kill other enemies in the field, the way we killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an American who had openly joined al-Qaida. A U.S. passport does not entitle a traitor to any special protection.
(Caveat: If a POW is turned, Stockholm-syndrome-like, after falling captive, these condemnatory considerations don't apply.)
Assume, however — and we will find out soon enough — that Bergdahl was not a defector. Simply wanted out — a deserter who walked or wandered away from his duty and his comrades for reasons as yet unknown. Do you bargain for a deserter?
Two imperatives should guide the answer. Bergdahl remains a member of the U.S. military and therefore is (a) subject to military justice and (b) subject to the soldiers' creed that we don't leave anyone behind.
What to do? Free him, then try him. Make the swap and then, if the evidence is as strong as it now seems, court-martial him to the fullest extent for desertion.
The swap itself remains, nonetheless, a very close call. I would fully respect a president who rejected the deal as simply too unbalanced.
What is impossible to respect is a president who makes this heart-wrenching deal and then does a victory lap in the Rose Garden and has his spokesmen and acolytes treat it as a cause for celebration. This is no victory. This is a defeat, a concession to a miserable reality, a dirty deal, perhaps necessary as a matter of principle but to be carried out with regret, resignation, even revulsion.
The Rose Garden stunt wasn't a messaging failure. It's a category error. The president seems oblivious to the gravity, indeed the very nature, of what he has just done. Which is why a stunned and troubled people are asking themselves what kind of man they have twice chosen to lead them.
1a) Because He Is Black, Americans Suffer and Die
Clearly, no amount of unprecedented unlawful power-grabs, narcissistic behavior, blatant lies, and ignoring of the Constitution will sway the mainstream media and the Democrats from their loyalty to Obama. Why? The answer is that Obama is black, which makes him their ultimate weapon of mass destruction – able to nuke traditional America. Obama's mission is to cram his radical socialist/progressive dream for America down our throats.
Obama’s reign of terror is but a mere preview of things to come if the MSM and Democrats are successful in duping Americans into handing Hillary Clinton the keys to the Oval Office. Just as Obama has ruled as America's first king, Hillary will be our first queen. Those who dare to criticize or oppose Queen Hillary's radial liberal agenda will be branded sexists and severely punished – subjected to a high-tech lynching, their politically battered carcasses left on public display to ward off other outspoken conservatives/Republicans.
The frightening inconvenient truth is the MSM, the Democratic Party, and Obama consider American suffering and loss of life acceptable collateral damage to protect Obama and implement his agenda. His black skin provides perfect political cover, similar to an impenetrable suit of armor, providing the left with a unique golden opportunity to implement all of their unsellable liberal utopian fantasies. The best interest of the American people even takes a backseat to the left's and Obama's obsession with appeasing our enemies.
Please allow me to recap incidents over the past 5 years that confirm that Team Obama (the MSM and Democrats) believe that protecting their golden child and his agenda trumps American lives.
While this first example is before his presidency, it does illustrate the cold, callous, political calculating nature of Obama the man. As an Illinois senator, Obama voted against the Born Alive Infants Protection Actthree times. The law would authorize hospital staff to provide medical assistance and try to save the lives of babies who miraculously survive abortions. Before the law, hospital staff were legally forced to simply place the baby into a room until he or she died. To secure the radical feminist vote, Obama insidiously voted against allowing staff to assist these feisty infant survivors – acceptable collateral damage in furthering his political ambitions.
Following the capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving Boston Marathon bomber, Obama's DOJ immediately took actions that suppressed vital intelligence-gathering. Why would Obama so swiftly end all questioning of the Muslim terrorist regarding future planned attacks on America? Unconscionably, protecting Obama's false narrative that terrorism is no longer a threat overrides national security (American lives).
Four Americans, including our brutally tortured U.S. ambassador, Chris Stevens, were killed during an al-Qaeda terrorist attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The Obama administration's behavior before and after the attack is the epitome of cold, hard-hearted political cover-up and posturing.
In a nutshell, the administration denied Ambassador Stevens's desperate pleads for extra security before the attack. Following the attack, the administration blatantly lied to the American people about its cause.
In a cold, calculated act of political deceit, Secretary of State at the time Hillary Clinton lied to the parents of the victims while looking them in the eye and shaking their hands. Hillary vowed to punish the guy who made an anti-Muslim video, knowing full well that the attack had nothing to do with a video.
Why is the administration hell-bent on hiding the truth about the Benghazi attack? One reason is that the administration, Democrats, and the MSM will not tolerate evidence disproving Obama's claim that terrorism is over – particularly right before the 2012 presidential election. One could conclude that team Obama considered the deaths of our U.S. ambassador and a few former Navy SEALs acceptable collateral damage to secure Obama's re-election.
Here is another example of the Democrats putting furthering Obama's agenda above American lives – only this time, we are talking children. During the government shutdown, Republicans wanted to vote to make sure the shutdown would not hinder kids with cancer from getting their medicine. Remarkably, Senate majority leader and Democrat Harry Reid blocked the Republicans' efforts. Reid placed making Republicans look bad above the lives of children. CNN reporter Dana Bash asked Reid, “If you can help one child, why won't you do it?” Reid replied, “Why, why, why would we want to do that?” Deplorably evil, cold, and politically calculating.
While we have not yet experienced the true horrors of ObamaCare once it is fully implemented, ObamaCare is wreaking havoc on American lives. Cancer patients are losing their doctors, who have been keeping them alive. Millions have lost their excellent health care plans, which Obama repeatedly promised they could keep. As Sarah Palin warned, there will be death panels, rationed care, and diminished care. Single-payer government-controlled health care is a major component of Obama's fundamental transformation of America. Therefore, truth about ObamaCare will not be tolerated. So how have the Democrats dealt with testimonies from Americans expressing how ObamaCare has devastated their lives? Harry Reid called them a bunch of liars.
If there was an doubt that Barack Obama is a cold, hard-hearted, political calculating megalomaniac, trading deserter Bowe Bergdahl for five major Taliban generals who will surely plot to kill more Americans confirms it. Empowered by Obama's trade, the Taliban promises more kidnappings. Every political action truly is all about Obama, mmm, mmm, mmm. Once again displaying his unprecedented arrogance, Obama ignored the law that requires that he give Congress 30 days' notice before transferring detainees out of Guantánamo.
What has emboldened Obama to continuously boldly go where no white president has gone before? The answer: his black-skin suit of armor. Despite Obama's multiple crimes and misdemeanors against the American people and the Constitution, serious opposition to the first black president is simply not an option for many in the GOP and MSM.
It is plain to see the pattern of behavior of Obama and his minions. They protect Obama and further their agenda at any and all cost while engaging in maximum exploitation of his skin color for perfect political cover. Therefore, because Obama is black, Americans suffer and die.
Clearly, no amount of unprecedented unlawful power-grabs, narcissistic behavior, blatant lies, and ignoring of the Constitution will sway the mainstream media and the Democrats from their loyalty to Obama. Why? The answer is that Obama is black, which makes him their ultimate weapon of mass destruction – able to nuke traditional America. Obama's mission is to cram his radical socialist/progressive dream for America down our throats.
Obama’s reign of terror is but a mere preview of things to come if the MSM and Democrats are successful in duping Americans into handing Hillary Clinton the keys to the Oval Office. Just as Obama has ruled as America's first king, Hillary will be our first queen. Those who dare to criticize or oppose Queen Hillary's radial liberal agenda will be branded sexists and severely punished – subjected to a high-tech lynching, their politically battered carcasses left on public display to ward off other outspoken conservatives/Republicans.
The frightening inconvenient truth is the MSM, the Democratic Party, and Obama consider American suffering and loss of life acceptable collateral damage to protect Obama and implement his agenda. His black skin provides perfect political cover, similar to an impenetrable suit of armor, providing the left with a unique golden opportunity to implement all of their unsellable liberal utopian fantasies. The best interest of the American people even takes a backseat to the left's and Obama's obsession with appeasing our enemies.
1b) Meet Obama's Kissingers
The National Security Council is no place for speechwriters and lobbyists.
By Kim Strassel
If the Bergdahl uproar feels creepily reminiscent of the Benghazi uproar, or the Syrian "red line" uproar, or the choose-your-own- Obama -foreign-adventure uproar, it's because they all have a common denominator. This is what happens when political hacks formally take over foreign policy.
It's the "formal" point that bears some meditation. Barack Obama isn't the first president to make foreign-policy decisions on the basis of domestic political calculations. He does, however, win the distinction of being the first president to utterly disregard—to treat with contempt—the institutions and procedures that were designed to help the commander in chief insulate the serious business of foreign policy and national security from baser political concerns.
Tommy Vietor, left, former National Security Council spokesman, and Ben Rhodes, deputy National Security Adviser. Associated Press
At the heart of this effort is the National Security Council, which has served presidents since its inception under Harry Truman. Made up of the president, vice president, a national security adviser, various Cabinet secretaries, and representatives from the military and the intelligence agencies, the NSC has been by procedure and fierce tradition a rare apolitical forum, a place for the president to hear hard reality. NSC staff are foreign-policy grownups, and its meetings are barred to political henchmen.
Or that was the case, until the Obama White House. By early March 2009, two months into this presidency, the New York Times had run a profile of David Axelrod, noting that Mr. Obama's top campaign guru and "political protector" was now "often" to be found "in the late afternoons" walking "to the Situation Room to attend some meetings of the National Security Council." President Obama's first national security adviser, former Marine General and NATO Commander Jim Jones, left after only two years following clashes with Mr. Obama's inner circle.
He was replaced by Democratic political operative and former Fannie Mae lobbyist Tom Donilon. Mr. Donilon joined Ben Rhodes, the Obama campaign speechwriter, who in 2009 had been elevated to deputy national security adviser for strategic communications. Also present was Tommy Vietor, whose entire career prior to NSC spokesman was as an Obama spinmeister—as a press aide in the 2004 Senate run, and campaign flack for the 2008 Iowa caucuses, and assistant White House press secretary. In fairness, his credentials also included getting caught on camera in 2010 pounding beers, shirtless, at a Georgetown bar. America's foreign-policy experts at work.
Not that Mr. Obama's first instinct is even to rely on his now overtly political NSC. This paper reported in September 2013 that as the White House struggled with the question of military intervention in Syria, it summoned all the old "Obama loyalists" for advice. They included his 2008 campaign manager ( David Plouffe ), his former press secretary ( Robert Gibbs ), a former speechwriter ( Jon Favreau ), and Mr. Vietor (who had by then left the NSC to form a political consulting group).
A serious-minded NSC, in the tumultuous aftermath of Benghazi, would have responded with a sober assessment for its president of the real and continued terror threat, and of the failings that resulted in four dead Americans. Instead we find the deputy NSA, Mr. Rhodes, crafting an internal email advising his colleagues to spin, and blame it all on an Internet video. Mr. Rhodes had no interest in advising the president on hard realities. His only interest was ensuring his boss got re-elected.
The same political Svengalis rooted for Mr. Obama's decision to set an Afghan withdrawal deadline, over the objections of military personnel. They were the architects of the president's decision to drop his "red line" warning to Syria's Bashar Assad on Congress, and then blame Congress for failure of action. They gave us resets, pivots and leading from behind, and in recent weeks have explained that Mr. Obama's foreign policy is best described as "Don't do stupid [stuff]." This is what happens when you give hacks control: Your foreign-policy "vision" gets reduced to a public-safety commercial from a vodka company.
Presidents bear ultimate responsibility for institutional dysfunction, but it is also the case that Mr. Donilon and his successor, Susan Rice, have ill-served their boss by tolerating (or even encouraging) political nonsense. Debate all you want over what motivated the White House to do the Bergdahl swap. What's beyond debate is that politics drove its rollout, and that there was nobody with enough seriousness or clout in the White House to stop it.
It was a political desire to sweep the Veterans Administration scandal off the front pages that put President Obama in the Rose Garden with Sgt. Bergdahl's parents—when Secretary of State John Kerry, or even a press release, would have given distance. It was a political desire to claim a foreign-policy victory that saw Ms. Rice again peddling a phony story, this time about how Sgt. Bergdahl had served with "honor and distinction"—when senior officials had to know that was questionable. Who failed to warn the president that Sgt. Bergdahl's fellow soldiers would surely speak out? Who failed to walk him through the ABCs of the statute he signed requiring Congressional notification, or warn him of the bipartisan fury his cold shoulder would inspire?
Most remarkable is that despite the endless loop of foreign-policy fiascoes, this White House seems oblivious of the need for institutional change. It has had its share of experienced hands ( Bob Gates, Leon Panetta ) come and go, but shows no evidence it learned from them. In Obama world, there is only politics. And so the world will continue to burn.
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2) A Hawk Stirs as Weber's UBS Sees US Inflation Set to Take Off
Leave it to Axel Weber to sound the inflation alarm while most of the world is focused on the threat of deflation.
2a)The Retirement Survival
2) A Hawk Stirs as Weber's UBS Sees US Inflation Set to Take Off
Leave it to Axel Weber to sound the inflation alarm while most of the world is focused on the threat of deflation.
A stalwart advocate of tight money at the European Central Bank, where he helped to set interest rates from 2004 to 2011, Weber says U.S. price gains and the subsequent response of the Federal Reserve will outpace investor expectations.
“I see more potential ahead for nervousness in the market,” Weber, chairman of UBS AG since 2012, told a London conference of the Institute of International Finance yesterday. “The whole driver is going to be the inflation rate by the end of the year in the U.S.”
The boss’s concerns are shared inside Switzerland’s largest bank. In a May 27 study, New York-based economist Maury Harris and colleagues outlined what they called a non-consensus view that the personal consumption expenditures price index excluding fuel and food will reach 2 percent by the end of this year. It rose 1.4 percent in April.
The Fed’s benchmark rate will jump to 1.25 percent by the end of next year and 3.25 by the end of 2016, UBS predicts. By contrast, the median estimate of economists in a May survey was for a 0.75 percent rate by the end of next year.
The UBS analysis points to tightening labor and rental markets, a less-disinflationary impact from imports and price gains at the factory gate.
Bond Yields
Such an environment sets the stage for a surge in bond yields by the end of the year, forcing the Fed to retreat from its low-interest rate commitment, in UBS’s view. The 10-year Treasury yield will rise to 3.25 percent in December from 2.57 percent today and touch 4 percent by the end of 2015, it says.
That would surprise many, with the median forecast of analysts in another Bloomberg poll suggesting the yield will be 3.14 percent in the fourth quarter of this year.
A year since emerging markets were roiled by the fear the U.S. central bank was readying to withdraw stimulus, Weber now says investors worldwide must brace themselves anew for international fallout from the Fed.
“Every U.S. tightening cycle has been associated with repercussions in the global economy,” he said. “I don’t have the hope it will be different this time around.”
Summit Transcript
Broadcast on Newsmax Media
2b) S&P 500 Will Hit 2,100 Within 12 Months
The S&P 500 has reached yet another record high Thursday, and analysts at S&P Capital IQ think the five-year rally has more room to run.
The firm raised its 12-month target for the index to 2,100 from 1,985 previously, MarketWatch reports. The S&P 500 closed at 1,940.46 Thursday.
S&P Capital IQ analysts expect S&P 500 companies' earnings per share to jump 12.4 percent in the second quarter of 2015 from the same period this year.
This could mean that the index's price-earnings ratio would shrink below 17. The ratio, based on trailing 12-month earnings, was 18.3 as of May 30, according to Birinyi Associates.
To be sure, the S&P Capital IQ analysts don't anticipate significant gains for the S&P 500 until other indexes breach current resistance levels. The Nasdaq Composite and the Russell 2000 index of small-cap stocks have lagged behind the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average since March.
Meanwhile, S&P Capital IQ left its model portfolio allocations unchanged at 50 percent U.S. stocks, 15 percent international stocks, 25 percent bonds and 10 percent cash.
Not everyone is enthusiastic about stocks. The lagging performance of the Nasdaq Composite and the Russell 2000 show it's not a real bull market, says Bert Dohmen, president of Dohmen Capital Research.
The rally has been built largely on share buybacks, meaning it's "just smoke and mirrors," he writes in an article for Forbes.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3) The Obama Doctrine
President Obama thought trading a deserter for five top terrorists would be a PR coup. What does this tell us about our president as a person? At the most basic level, it shows that Obama does not share Americans’ visceral reaction to Bergdahl’s betrayal of his fellow soldiers and country. Obama, and no doubt Kerry, thought a deserter could be palmed off as a perfectly fine hero.
Our president worked to install terrorists in power in Egypt, where they had been successfully suppressed for sixty years. He helped depose our ally Mubarak and did his best to hand over Egypt to the Muslim Brothers, aNazi-jihadi group dedicated to sharia law, the worldwide caliphate, and killing all the Jews on the planet. Obama is still punishing Egypt for rising up and getting rid of the Brothers, by withholding military aid. This is not appeasement; it is not even collaboration – it is working for your enemy’s cause.
By BARBARA OPALL-ROME
US strategic analyst Anthony Cordesman warned June 8 that
a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran -despite repeated calls for restraint
from its key ally in Washington - “better damn well be successful to an
extraordinary degree.”
Otherwise, the veteran scholar told an Israeli audience at the annual
Herzliya Conference here, “We’ll have to ask you, ‘What part of the word NO
do you not understand.”
Cordesman, the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Washington-based
Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Israel’s decision to
act on its oft-threatened right to attack Iran would have “major impact” on
bilateral relations.
“You need to understand that your unilateral action could have a critical
impact on US-Israel relations,” he said.
Speaking here as top US State Department officials were engaged in direct
talks with Iranian counterparts in Geneva, Cordesman urged Israelis not to
assume that the prospective agreement with Tehran “would be a wrong one.”
The US, he said, “can deal very easily with failure of the peace process
[with the Palestinians] and with unilateral tactical action by Israel for
its own defense.” However, he insisted the US “cannot easily deal with an
Israel that assumes this deal is a failure before it is made.”
Speaking at the same June 8 session, US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro
said US President Barack Obama has laid out two “nonnegotiable” objectives
vis-a-vis the Iranian nuclear program: “That Iran will not be able to
develop a nuclear weapon” and that the agreement provide “credible
assurances that Iran’s nuclear program will be peaceful.”
He attempted to ease Israeli angst over prospects that world powers would
conclude a deal with Iran, perhaps by the July 20 deadline set for the
current round of talks. “We’re heading into a critical period. And we will
restate that no deal is better than a bad deal.”
Shapiro insisted, “We’re working on a package, not a checklist.”
Washington could accede only to a “comprehensive agreement that addresses
all aspects and meets our objectives,” Shapiro said.
Speaking at the same June 8 session, Ya’akov Amidror, former Israeli
National Security Advisor, reiterated Israel’s obligation to be prepared to
go it alone against Iran.
Despite repeated US assurances that it would not support a so-called bad
deal, Amidror said Washington and other world powers “are ready for almost
any type of agreement with Iran.”
Amidror insisted Tehran “is not prepared to give up its nuclear program” and
that Israel must be prepared to deal with the consequences of an agreement
that does not meet its demands for a full dismantling of Tehran’s nuclear
weapon project.
“There is a lack of willingness by many in the world, also in the US” to use
force against Iran, Amidror said.
Amidror hailed US-Israel strategic ties and insisted “there is nobody else”
that would stand by Israel as Washington has done for decades. Nevertheless,
he insisted: “We need to be ready to do things by ourselves.”
The S&P 500 has reached yet another record high Thursday, and analysts at S&P Capital IQ think the five-year rally has more room to run.
The firm raised its 12-month target for the index to 2,100 from 1,985 previously, MarketWatch reports. The S&P 500 closed at 1,940.46 Thursday.
S&P Capital IQ analysts expect S&P 500 companies' earnings per share to jump 12.4 percent in the second quarter of 2015 from the same period this year.
This could mean that the index's price-earnings ratio would shrink below 17. The ratio, based on trailing 12-month earnings, was 18.3 as of May 30, according to Birinyi Associates.
To be sure, the S&P Capital IQ analysts don't anticipate significant gains for the S&P 500 until other indexes breach current resistance levels. The Nasdaq Composite and the Russell 2000 index of small-cap stocks have lagged behind the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average since March.
Meanwhile, S&P Capital IQ left its model portfolio allocations unchanged at 50 percent U.S. stocks, 15 percent international stocks, 25 percent bonds and 10 percent cash.
Not everyone is enthusiastic about stocks. The lagging performance of the Nasdaq Composite and the Russell 2000 show it's not a real bull market, says Bert Dohmen, president of Dohmen Capital Research.
The rally has been built largely on share buybacks, meaning it's "just smoke and mirrors," he writes in an article for Forbes.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3) The Obama Doctrine
President Obama thought trading a deserter for five top terrorists would be a PR coup. What does this tell us about our president as a person? At the most basic level, it shows that Obama does not share Americans’ visceral reaction to Bergdahl’s betrayal of his fellow soldiers and country. Obama, and no doubt Kerry, thought a deserter could be palmed off as a perfectly fine hero.
Before rushing on to the usual chatter about Obama’s incompetence, his wanting to get attention off the VA, and his grandiose belief in his brilliance at negotiating with Islamist regimes, it is important to pause and consider why Obama’s gut reaction is so off.
Obama didn’t have a normal visceral reaction to the 9/11 attack in Benghazi, either. Any normal person would have rushed to his post in the Situation Room to oversee a rescue attempt. On that one, Obama skipped the Situation Room entirely, and the rescue attempt, and went to bed to get his beauty sleep for a Vegas fundraiser. Something is off.
Obama does not have a normal visceral reaction to Iran’s mullahs armed with nuclear weapons. Just as the economic sanctions on Iran were beginning to bite, Obama lifted them entirely, restored Iran's frozen assets, left their nuclear weapons program intact, and told Israel there will be “negative consequences” if they take out Iran’s nuclear facilities. He is obviously comfortable with a nuclear Iran. That is strange.
Obama does not have normal visceral reactions to jihadi groups.
Barack Obama doesn’t have a normal reaction to the Palestinians, who are busy lobbing 8,000 missiles into Israel from Gaza – murdering, maiming and terrifying men, women, and children. Our president has once again chosen to flout American law, which bans aid to Hamas, and announced we will be funding Hamas as part of a “unity” government.
Obama does not recoil at Arab villagers sneaking into Jewish homes to bash a baby’s head against the wall. President Obama understands and sympathizes with the Islamic cause. He is proud of that. He thinks the Arabs are the aggrieved party, and that the Israelis should “walk a mile in Palestinians’shoes.” Obama’s gut check on the Israelis and the Palestinians is off.
Obama wants the terrorists to win. He mistakes them for a civil rights group.
He is not unique in this, which is why the left-wing media are happy to cover for him and promote his anti-American policies as normal politics. The left wing of the Democratic Party, including Hillary Clinton, doesn’t believe that Islamists are implacable enemies. There is no violent, organized, widespread supremacist Islamic movement based on the mainstream teachings of Islam. The problem is America and Israel. We are too successful, too powerful, too white, and too Western for the left’s taste. Frustrated Muslims are justified in wanting to kill Americans and Israelis. It is we who need to change our ways.
His progressive base applauds Obama as community organizer to the world, fighting for social justice for the poor, angry Muslims who only hate and kill because they are mistreated by colonialists and bullying cowboys.
To leftists like our president, we are the bad guys. Sharia law is a right. Israeli’s self-defense and sovereignty are wrongs. Islam is a beautiful religion; Judaism and Christianity are backward and hateful. Islamophobia is real. The jihadi threat is not real.
Steven Emerson, head of The Investigative Project on Terrorism, lists numerous cases of jihad in America, including the mass murders by Army Major Hasan and the Boston Marathon bombing, where he believes Obama’s pro-jihadi homeland security policies hobbled the FBI from successful pre-emptive action.
“Numerous experts on Islamic terrorism like myself - and I had given 143 lectures at the FBI, CIA - were banned from speaking to any U.S. government counterterrorism conferences," Mr. Emerson told The Washington Times. "Instead, these agencies were ordered to invite Muslim Brotherhood front groups.”
The Obama administration has invited Muslim Brotherhood front groups, CAIR and others, to control FBI counter-terrorism training. The FBI has been forced to never mention the term Islamic extremist. The FBI is not allowed to describe the Koran as the teachings of Mohammed – it is the revealed word of God. The Obama administration won’t allow the FBI to mention young Middle Eastern males. The FBI is not allowed to link al-Qaeda to the first World Trade Center and Khobar Tower bombings.
Calling this political correctness is to trivialize it. If these policies were limited to discussions in the faculty lounge, they could be called political correctness. When our president hands power over our homeland security to jihadi groups, it is collaboration with the enemy.
Obama has a pattern of promoting terrorist goals. Obama knows his approach, if honestly reported to the public, would be hugely unpopular. That is why he does it secretly and relies on his Democrat lapdog Congress and media to back him up. Until Bergdahl, they covered successfully for him every time.
Perhaps Obama really does think Bergdahl served with honor. Obama himself has carved out a gray zone with the jihadis, partaking equally of capitulation and treason. The Obama Doctrine: enable jihadis to dominate the West.
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4) US Analyst Warns Israel: Unilateral Attack on Iran 'Better Damn Well Be
Successful'By BARBARA OPALL-ROME
US strategic analyst Anthony Cordesman warned June 8 that
a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran -despite repeated calls for restraint
from its key ally in Washington - “better damn well be successful to an
extraordinary degree.”
Otherwise, the veteran scholar told an Israeli audience at the annual
Herzliya Conference here, “We’ll have to ask you, ‘What part of the word NO
do you not understand.”
Cordesman, the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Washington-based
Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Israel’s decision to
act on its oft-threatened right to attack Iran would have “major impact” on
bilateral relations.
“You need to understand that your unilateral action could have a critical
impact on US-Israel relations,” he said.
Speaking here as top US State Department officials were engaged in direct
talks with Iranian counterparts in Geneva, Cordesman urged Israelis not to
assume that the prospective agreement with Tehran “would be a wrong one.”
The US, he said, “can deal very easily with failure of the peace process
[with the Palestinians] and with unilateral tactical action by Israel for
its own defense.” However, he insisted the US “cannot easily deal with an
Israel that assumes this deal is a failure before it is made.”
Speaking at the same June 8 session, US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro
said US President Barack Obama has laid out two “nonnegotiable” objectives
vis-a-vis the Iranian nuclear program: “That Iran will not be able to
develop a nuclear weapon” and that the agreement provide “credible
assurances that Iran’s nuclear program will be peaceful.”
He attempted to ease Israeli angst over prospects that world powers would
conclude a deal with Iran, perhaps by the July 20 deadline set for the
current round of talks. “We’re heading into a critical period. And we will
restate that no deal is better than a bad deal.”
Shapiro insisted, “We’re working on a package, not a checklist.”
Washington could accede only to a “comprehensive agreement that addresses
all aspects and meets our objectives,” Shapiro said.
Speaking at the same June 8 session, Ya’akov Amidror, former Israeli
National Security Advisor, reiterated Israel’s obligation to be prepared to
go it alone against Iran.
Despite repeated US assurances that it would not support a so-called bad
deal, Amidror said Washington and other world powers “are ready for almost
any type of agreement with Iran.”
Amidror insisted Tehran “is not prepared to give up its nuclear program” and
that Israel must be prepared to deal with the consequences of an agreement
that does not meet its demands for a full dismantling of Tehran’s nuclear
weapon project.
“There is a lack of willingness by many in the world, also in the US” to use
force against Iran, Amidror said.
Amidror hailed US-Israel strategic ties and insisted “there is nobody else”
that would stand by Israel as Washington has done for decades. Nevertheless,
he insisted: “We need to be ready to do things by ourselves.”
What happens when the world’s greatest spin doctor commits malpractice — on himself?
That is the question that now bedevils Barack Obama after what have been, without a doubt, the worst weeks of his presidency.
From the Veterans Administration scandal to the jaw-dropping events surrounding the swap of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the man with the most remarkable intuitive grasp of how to preserve and enhance his own image the world has ever seen has now tarnished it almost beyond recognition.
Who would have expected such a development? From the speech in 2004 that made him a rising star through the campaign in 2008 that made him president, Obama was the most formidable political propagandist of all time.
An unabashed liberal and among the most nakedly partisan politicians in this country’s history, Obama came to fame in ’04 loudly declaiming that we are not red states or blue states, but the United States. He knocked off Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries by using the mechanisms his party had put in place to empower its left wing — while claiming to be a more unifying figure than she.
In June ’08, he began speaking at a podium with a decal resembling the presidential seal on it, a brilliant way of planting the suggestion that his election was a foregone conclusion.He delivered his convention speech that year on a set that suggested he was speaking in the Athens Acropolis, thus hardening in the minds of the chattering classes the idea that he was the greatest orator since Pericles.
Since taking office, he has continued to work assiduously to maintain total control over his own image. He has stiffed the White House press corps, not only by denying reporters access to him but by creating a force field of discipline that keeps his staff from talking about what is going on in any way.
The public gets what little White House information it has from Obama’s own propaganda stream — official tweets, Instagram photos and mini-events carefully manufactured for positive media effect.
Meanwhile, the administration as a whole has declared a cold war against the media it does not control. It tapped phones of Associated Press staff. In court papers, it called James Rosen of Fox News a “co-conspirator” in espionage for seeking out and publishing a leak. It could have, but has not, dropped a Bush-era subpoena of The New York Times’s James Risen — with the end result that Risen will likely go to jail.
The old-line media may scream and squawk — Jill Abramson, late of the Times, said “this is the most secretive White House I have ever been involved in covering, and that includes . . . presidents from President Reagan on up through now, and I was Washington bureau chief of the Times during George W. Bush’s first term.”
Obama was able to do this because he has fed the public-relations beast in other, arguably more effective ways. Historians and his fellow politicians will be studying his mastery of the trade of image creation and enhancement in the age of Twitter and Instagram and Reddit.
Modal Trigger
Obama appeared on Zach Galifianakis’ popular Funny or Die web show “Between Two Ferns” in March.Photo: AP
While there has been little or no cooperation with reporters, there sure was plenty of cooperation with the production team of the Oscar-bait film “Zero Dark Thirty.”
The president favors jokey late-night interviews with starstruck hosts who thrill to call him “dude” (Jon Stewart in 2010) over substantive discussions with expert journalists. He “slow jams the news” with Jimmy Fallon. He has become a national entertainer.
Previous presidents could only have dreamt of such uncritical treatment by pop culture; but then, of course, most previous presidents believed the presidency was too serious and august a position, and the power it wields far too formidable, to participate in lowering its exalted standing in the way Obama has.
Obama therefore had reason to believe his stage management of the swap of Bowe Bergdahl for five Taliban commanders would play to his advantage.
Modal Trigger
Obama with Jani and Bob Bergdahl after his announcement Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl had been released from captivity.Photo: AP
He knew a firestorm would inevitably erupt over the release of the Taliban 5 from Gitmo, but as long as it was a political and policy firestorm, he could insulate himself from it by invoking the greatest of all pop-culture fantasies: a happy ending.
The importance of the storyline was so absolute that his national-security adviser,Susan Rice, found it necessary to go on a Sunday chat show and say Bowe Bergdahl had “served with distinction and honor.”
She knew that was not a true thing to say about Bergdahl’s service, but she had to say it because the pop-culture plotline called for it.
She also said reporters Bergdahl’s release had been urgent because he was near death — a detail that offered even greater emotional justification.
Alas, this proved not to be true either; at a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, said the administration had no intelligence to suggest this.
The bottom line is that the president settled on a controversial, high- risk strategy here in a difficult and problematic manner — and then sought to use his mastery of pop culture to change the story to a more palatable one. But some stories just can’t be gussied up.
More important for the president’s future fortunes is this lesson: You can only spin for so long before you start spinning yourself. Spin and spin and spin and soon you have a whirlwind to reap.
4b)The incredible shrinking President
Hour by hour he gets smaller and smaller!
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
Less than two years after voters gave President Barack Obama a strong mandate for a second term, the White House is struggling against perceptions that it is losing its grip.
At home, the bungled rollout of the Obamacare website and the shocking revelations about an entrenched culture of incompetence and fraud in the VA have undercut faith in the President’s managerial competency.
Abroad, a surging Russia, an aggressive China, a war torn Middle East and a resurgent terror network are putting his foreign policy credentials to the test. With the GOP hoping to seize control of the Senate in November’s midterm elections, and the inevitable decline in presidential power that occurs as second term presidents move toward lame-duck status, Obama risks being sidelined and marginalized for the remaining two years of his term.
Last week’s tempest over the Bergdahl exchange seemed to roll all the President’s troubles together into a single storm. The decision to free five Taliban fighters from Guantanamo in exchange for an American soldier with a complicated past energized the President’s opponents, befuddled and angered important Congressional allies, and renewed questions about the political instincts of the President and his closest aides. The White House apparently thought that the release would be a moment of national unity and celebration and arranged for Sgt. Bergdahl’s parents to meet Obama in a highly publicized Rose Garden ceremony that now looks like a huge political blunder.
It’s been a long and bumpy road to this point. Few American presidents came into office viewed with so much optimism and hope. Obama was swept and re-swept into office with a clear expectation that being smart — or at least not being stupid — would be enough to mend fences around the globe and at home. Things aren’t so cheery now, and not being George W. Bush may not, it appears, be sufficient.
Obama is not, however, prepared to pick up his toys and go home. Stymied in Congress, where a coalition of Republicans and red state Democrats have effectively blocked his major initiatives in both the House and the Senate, the President is determined to use his executive powers to carve out a legacy whether Congress likes it or not. The new EPA regulations to cut CO2 levels from power generators and his decision to sidestep Congress on the release of five Taliban prisoners at Guantanamo in exchange for Sergeant Bergdahl show a White House anything but resigned to the prospect of presidential decline.
In both foreign and domestic affairs, Obama has plenty of executive authority to use. Moreover, the signature accomplishment of his first term, the ACA health care law, is potentially the most significant piece of domestic legislation since the 1960s and was written to give the executive branch the power to redesign much of the American health system as the President’s appointees in the federal bureaucracy set about implementing the law. The Dodd-Frank Act, intended to stabilize Wall Street and prevent another 2008 style financial crisis, gave the executive branch broad authority to re-regulate the financial sector.
Why, then, does a feisty President with more power than any of his peacetime predecessors, one who is determined to use those powers to the max, look so much a victim of events he can’t control?
It isn’t for lack of ambition; Obama aspires to be a transformational leader at home and abroad. The ACA attempts to redesign an industry that accounts for 17.2 % of GDP. The EPA’s new regulations cover 66% of the country’s energy production. Overseas, he’s picked goals like getting a global climate treaty, destroying Al-Qaeda, democratizing the Arab world, eliminating nuclear weapons and achieving détente with Iran.
These are big goals; achieving them would give Obama a significant place in the history books. But there’s a catch; large and complex projects are hard to carry out, and the President seems to consistently underestimate the difficulties in turning compelling visions into practical programs. As a result, he now finds himself haunted by goals and expectations he set for himself, caught in a gap between promise and performance that has proved unexpectedly hard to close.
The implementation of the ACA was problematic in ways that go far beyond the famously awful website. While a substantial number of people have gotten access to health insurance thanks to the law, the implementation challenges remain epic — and the public still isn’t fully behind the new system. Many of the law’s provisions have already been suspended, amended, and reinterpreted so many times that it is now probable the President will leave office without being able to roll the whole law out as projected. Even government accountants have given up figuring out what the law means or how it will work: this week, the CBO stated that it was henceforth impossible to score Obamacare.
Meanwhile, the problems at the Veterans Administration — problems candidate Obama vowed to fix back in 2008 — erupted last month in a scandal that 79% of Americans blame at least in part on Obama’s management. A shock poll in The Washington Post showed 48% of Americans now think that President George W. Bush was better at “getting things done” than
his replacement-compared with 42% who think the opposite.
Meanwhile, President’s Obama’s repeated calls for gun control legislation and immigration reform have fallen flat. Overseas, the gap between promise and accomplishment is, if anything, more daunting. Early in his first term Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in a decision that struck even his most ardent admirers as premature; there isn’t much talk today of a repeat visit to Oslo.
Not since the end of the Cold War has an American president faced this much disorder and trouble in the world. The “reset” with Russia ended with the attack on Crimea. The Arab Spring has foundered in chaos, dictatorship and war. The President’s declaration that “Assad must go” has proved as hollow as his demand that Syria cease chemical warfare attacks on its citizens. Al-Qaeda and related jihadist groups are active and growing from West Africa through Central Asia; in some ways the terror threat today is greater than ever before. The war in Afghanistan, a war that candidate Obama vowed to win, is sputtering inconclusively toward a less than stellar close. An increasingly feisty China is challenging the United States and its allies, and North Korea grinds grimly ahead with its nuclear program.
Once again, the President seems to have underestimated how much effort would be required to achieve the goals he set out. He clearly underestimated the difficulties of building a stable and businesslike relationship with Russia and was shocked and surprised at Putin’s attack on Ukraine. He underestimated the difficulty of getting the Israelis and Palestinians to reach a peace agreement, overestimated the strength of the democratic forces in Egypt, and seems not to have fully understood the difficulties in winning the Afghan war until after he committed American troops to a surge. His administration has also seriously underestimated China’s readiness to oppose American policy in the Pacific; the South and East China seas are becoming more dangerous and more militarized by the day.
With 30 months to go, Obama still may have a chance to regain control of both the domestic and international agendas, but to do that he’s going to have to change his approach. He needs to focus on the nitty-gritty, day-to-day business of governing; six years into his administration, the public is fed up with promises and hungry for concrete accomplishments.President Obama needs to show that he knows how to get things done, or increasingly the world will move on as if he wasn’t there.Mead is the James Clarke Chace
Professor of Foreign Policy and the Humanities at Bard College, and edits the American Interest Online
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Photo: EREZ HARODI - OSIM TSILUM Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz on Monday laid out a stark scenario in which he described an Iran in possession of dozens of nuclear warheads ten years from now. Speaking at the Herzliya Conference at the Interdisciplinary Center, Steinitz said that the nightmare scenario would likely be the result of Western powers signing a "bad deal" with Iran on its nuclear program. He said that in the event that the P5+1 group of world powers - US, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany - sign an unsatisfactory deal with Iran that does not dismantle its nuclear program, the Islamic Republic could have 50-100 nuclear warheads by the year 2024. In addition to the nuclear bombs, Steinitz warned Iran would also possess ballistic missiles with the ability to reach western Europe and the east coast of the United States ten years from now. Steinitz said in this scenario, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, Turkey, and perhaps other Middle East states, would begin their own nuclear weapons programs in answer to Iran. "It is a difficult scenario, but not an impossible scenario," Steinitz stated. Steinitz explained that allowing Iran to remain on the threshold of making a nuclear bomb would also constitute a "bad deal." He said that the P5+1 has to ask itself what will happen 5-10 years down the line, not just in the next year or two. Steinitz cautioned against the belief that any deal is better than no deal. He warned of the consequences of giving Iran legitimacy while allowing it to remain a nuclear threshold state. He said that today Iran is already a threshold state, but it is considered an illegitimate state. The international sanctions regime hurts its economy, which loses some $100 billion annually. The Likud minister said that this serves as a deterrent to other states with nuclear aspirations. "If other states in the Middle East consider competing with Iran in the nuclear arena, they know that there is consequences," he said. A terrible agreement that gives Iran legitimacy while leaving it a threshold state, will pave the way for other states to demand the same thing, he added. Israel is not against a diplomatic solution to the Iranian threat, Steinitz said. "We are in favor of this, if it is a satisfactory, complete deal. But we do not support a shortsighted deal." Steinitz addressed the possibility that talks could be extended beyond their July 20 deadline. "We don't like the idea of adding six months to the negotiations, however if the alternative is to rush to sign a deal at any cost, we prefer extending the talks in order to close all of the holes in a bad deal," he stated. Steinitz said that Israel is looking at the nuclear talks "with hope, mixed with great worry. We hope the powers will fulfill their responsibility to prevent dangers to us and our children in Israel and the world in 10 or 20 years." The Likud minister said Israel was frantically attempting to convince the world powers not to sign a bad nuclear deal with Iran. "This is what we are working on now. The destiny of the world for the coming decades will be determined in the coming weeks," he said. 4d)
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