The article pertained to GW's concept of reading 100 books per year (Century Club) and the program was brought to her by her friend Tevi Troy who worked in the White House as a community liaison assistant.
===
Herzog now believes the two state solution is dead but still partly blames Netanyahu. At lest he did not accuse Netanyahu of sending Israeli death squads to kill Palestinians. (See 1 below.)
===
What I began to write (speculate) about many months ago has now become a front page topic.
When I broached the subject, many of my liberal friends challenged me, said I was crazy and even my wife still believes the Clinton's are too powerful for this to happen.
Time will tell, it always does. I remain convinced and the article below simply re-confirms my thinking.
Our Republic is based on man's adherence to law(s) and I know our political system is corrupt and laws are broken all the time and this president has been a master at doing so and skirting our Constitution. That said, I also have reminded readers, it will be the Judicial System which will save our Republic. If we cannot trust the courts to eventually right wrongs then we truly are sunk.
I learned from my father, who helped defeat Bull Connor, that as long as we adhere to the law and seek support from the Judicial System, our nation will survive even the worst and most corrupt leaders.
I also had this driven into my head in law school.
It simply takes the courageous to speak out and seek judicial redressing. It does not always come quickly because courts grind slowly but eventually they get it right more times than not and this is one of our nation's great strengths and sets America apart from all others.(See 2 below.)
===
Iran's leader reads the tea leaves and comes to the correct conclusion - Obama is a patsy. (See 3 below.)
===
Amazing that Professor Hanson finds Hillarious has engaged in many contradictions. (See 4 below.)
===
The weekend is approaching and we have had enough bad news. Now for some humor and inspirational commentary from some football greats. (See 5 below.)
===
Dick
========================================================================1)
Requiem for a Two-State Solution
For many Americans claiming to be friends of Israel, belief in the two-state solution to the conflict with the Palestinians is more a matter of faith than anything else. Nevertheless, confidence that Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank will magically create peace is still strong in some quarters. The foreign policy establishment, the Jewish left and, of course, an Obama administration that still has a year left in which it can continue to pursue its goal of creating even more daylight between the U.S. and its sole democratic ally in the Middle East, all still think the two-state solution is the only answer. Those who subscribe to this theory believe that it must be diligently pursued via pressure on Israel regardless of the circumstances or the complete lack of interest in implementing such a scheme on the part of the Palestinians. But sometimes things happen that even the most dogged critics of the current Israeli government have to notice. Or, at least, they would if they had any intellectual integrity.
Such an event happened today when Isaac Herzog, the head of Israel’s Zionist Union declared the two-state solution no longer viable. The Zionist Union is the current incarnation of the Labor Party, once the country’s natural party of government and for decades the flagship of the peace movement within the Jewish state. For Labor and its successor, the two-state solution has been the sine qua non of their hopes for the country’s future and the core of its critique of their Likud rivals led by Prime Minister Netanyahu. So it is a sea change of major proportions for Herzog to openly acknowledge that for now the mantra of two states is unrealistic. Indeed, to put in terms of American politics, it would be more or less like the Republicans renouncing the goal of a balanced budget or the Democrats giving up on universal health care.“I don’t see a possibility at the moment of implementing the two-state solution,” he told Army Radio. “I want to yearn for it, I want to move toward it, I want negotiations, I sign on to it and I am obligated to it, but I don’t see the possibility of doing it right now.”
Though this means all the leading factions in the Knesset are now more or less agreed that two states aren’t viable, Herzog still cast the blame for this situation in a partisan manner. He put the blame for the current situation on Netanyahu as much as on Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas. That’s unfair since Netanyahu announced his willingness to accept two states early in his current tenure froze settlement building and even offered Abbas a withdrawal from most of the West Bank during negotiations. Moreover, as Herzog knows all too well, the Palestinians have already demonstrated their unwillingness to accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders would be drawn by refusing statehood offers from Labor’s Ehud Barak in 2000 and 2001 and Ehud Olmert in 2008.
Moreover, the sincerity of Herzog’s eagerness to damn Netanyahu along with Abbas is given the lie by his discussion of what he would do in the rather unlikely event that his party was given the opportunity to form a government in the foreseeable future. He did not claim he could achieve what Netanyahu hasn’t accomplished and to promise to deliver a two-state solution as Israel’s left has always promised it could. Instead, he offered a meek program centered on increased security measures.
Indeed, rather than speak of greater outreach to the Palestinians, his primary answer was to build more fences. Herzog’s idea is to complete the separation barrier begun under Ariel Sharon during the second intifada and to completely protect “all” of Israel’s settlement blocs. This makes sense because even if there were a two-state solution, those blocs would be included inside Israel. The same can be said for his idea to do everything possible to separate Arab villages in the Jerusalem area from Jewish neighborhoods and to allow into Israel only those Palestinians that are vetted by the security establishment.
He also speaks of confidence-building measures to help the Palestinians, but he believes the Israel Defense Forces must remain in the West Bank and especially in the Jordan Valley where it can ensure Israel’s eastern frontier is secure.
Of course, despite his bitterness at Netanyahu, there is very little in any of this that is different from the prime minister’s approach to these issues including those measures aimed at boosting the Palestinian economy. Though he blames Netanyahu for trying to “manage” the conflict which he notes has blown up in a third intifada, Herzog’s plans seem to be just as much an attempt at management of an intractable problem as those of the prime minister.
Why is Labor shifting to the right?
The answer is obvious. It wants to survive. The overwhelming majority of Israelis understand that Labor’s Oslo and Camp David plans for peace have blown up in their faces. The same can be said for Sharon’s withdrawal from Gaza, which has become an independent Palestinian state in all but name run by and for terrorists. President Obama and American liberals believe further withdrawals from the West Bank are necessary to save Israel from itself. But Israelis understand that doing so would merely replicate the Gaza fiasco on a larger and more dangerous scale. For the rump of Labor to continue to pretend that such an insane proposal was a good idea would only further marginalize its already decimated ranks.
Indeed, what Herzog clearly wants to do is to run to the right of the supposedly “hard line” Netanyahu and to accuse him of being insufficiently tough on the deadly Palestinians terrorism that is plaguing the country on a daily basis. Unlike Americans who simply ignore any evidence about the conflict that doesn’t validate their preexisting assumptions, Israelis are aware that their so-called peace partners are both inciting and applauding the most gruesome acts of terrorism. Moreover, they have noticed that Palestinians don’t seem to draw any distinction between Jews sitting in a Tel Aviv café or those living in a West Bank settlement. For them, all are ripe targets for murder and those who commit such atrocities are considered heroes.
This is an important point American Jewish left-wingers that pose as experts about Israel steadfastly refuse to acknowledge. It also illustrates how pointless the Obama administration’s efforts to pressure Israel have been. Though Obama treats the hundreds of thousands of Jews who live in parts of Jerusalem as well as those in the settlement blocs as living in “illegitimate” communities, even the Israeli left is saying loud and clear that all of them are staying where they are and will be defended.
No one should expect these facts to influence Israel’s critics. But it ought to have some impact on those vying for the presidency in both parties. The next president’s task will be to repair the “daylight” damage Obama has done. But they should also be willing to tell the world that there will be no more talk of two states until the Palestinians give up their dreams of Israel’s destruction and cease terrorism.
Should the Palestinian political culture ever change to the point where a belief in permanent peace with a Jewish state becomes viable, then it will be time to resurrect plans for two states. But until then, any further discussion along these lines is a waste of time and energy and does nothing to convince the Palestinians to give up their unrealistic expectations.
Americans need to recognize that the requiem for two states is being sounded. Until such a sea change occurs, the U.S. ought to support Israel’s efforts to manage the conflict and to do all in its power to discourage further attempts to delegitimize the Jewish state. Doing so is a matter of Israeli consensus. The same should apply here to those, regardless of their partisan or ideological loyalties, that are truly friends of Israel.
=======================================================
2)
2)
Will Obama pardon Hillary?
American Tax Dollars for the Mullahs
Tehran gets more cash while its U.S. victims get nothing.
Ali Khamenei congratulated Iran’s diplomats on Tuesday for making the “front of arrogance and bullying”—that would be the U.S.—retreat. Iran’s Supreme Leader has good reason to be happy. Having preserved the core of his nuclear capabilities, his regime is now on the receiving end of a financial windfall.
Take the financial component of the nuclear accord that took formal effect on Saturday. In addition to lifting most sanctions and releasing more than $100 billion in frozen Iranian assets, the Obama Administration over the weekend agreed to pay the mullahs a separate $1.7 billion to settle an Iranian claim dating to the 1970s.
That amount includes a $400 million trust fund used by the Shah to purchase American arms before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, plus $1.3 billion in interest. You can argue whether the trust fund properly belongs to the regime that overthrew the Shah, but at least that $400 million was originally Iranian money.
The $1.3 billion interest payment will come from U.S. taxpayers, which U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry claims “was fixed at a reasonable rate of interest.” Maybe so, but it happens that $1.7 billion is also the amount at issue in a case brought by American victims of Iranian terrorism against the Central Bank of Iran. The plaintiffs include victims and survivors of the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing and the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, among other Iranian-directed atrocities.
The victims argue that a statute passed by Congress in 2012 entitles them to use $1.7 billion held by the Iranians in a New York account to satisfy judgments they’ve won against Tehran in U.S. courts. All told, such victims hold $45 billion in civil judgments awarded by American courts over two decades, but they have no way to collect except to attach Iranian assets in U.S. banks.
The Iranian regime has challenged the constitutionality of the pertinent portion of the 2012 law. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case last week and is expected to rule by June. The Obama Administration argued in favor of the victims. Yet President Obama and Mr. Kerry didn’t press for fair settlements for these victims as part of the nuclear deal and now seem to be pre-emptively reimbursing Tehran for its potential losses from the claims. The State Department told us Wednesday the settlement isn’t connected to the claims of terrorism victims.
This week also has delivered another diplomatic triumph to Tehran, with the quashing of international arrest warrants for 14 alleged Iranian nuclear proliferators and arms smugglers. These include two figures associated with Mahan Air, an airline that the U.S. alleges helps arm Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria and transports members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The Treasury in September warned that it “will continue to expose Mahan’s front companies, and to remind governments and the private industry in the 24 cities where Mahan continues to fly that they risk exposure to U.S. sanctions.” Yet as research by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies has shown, Mahan planes continue to fly routes from Tehran to destinations in Syria, and the airline acquired nine new aircraft last year. The quashing of an Interpol red notice for Mahan’s CEO belies Treasury’s promise.
Mr. Obama has repeatedly assured Congress and American allies in the Middle East that his nuclear deal wouldn’t foreclose the U.S. from punishing Iranian terrorism and regional aggression. Mr. Khamenei will conclude otherwise after the American President’s most recent concessions.
==========================================================================
The Many Contradictions of Hillary Clinton
Yet her husband, Bill Clinton, reportedly made $10 million as an advisor and an occasional partner in the Yucaipa Global Partnership, a fund registered in the Cayman Islands.
Is Ms. Clinton's implicit argument that she knows offshore tax dodging is unethical because her family has benefitted from it? Does she plan to return millions of dollars of her family's offshore-generated income?
Clinton is calling for "huge campaign finance reform," apparently to end the excessive and often pernicious role of big money in politics. But no candidate, Republican or Democrat, raised more than the $112 million that Clinton collected in 2015 for her primary campaign.
In 2013, Clinton earned nearly $1.6 million in speaking fees from Wall Street banks. She raked in $675,000 from Goldman Sachs, and $225,000 apiece from Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley and UBS Wealth Management. Did that profiteering finally make Clinton sour on Wall Street's pay-for-play ethics?
Clinton has also vowed to raise taxes on hedge fund managers. Is that a way of expressing displeasure with her son-in-law, Marc Mezvinsky, who operates a $400 million hedge fund?
For that matter, how did Clinton's daughter, Chelsea, who worked for a consulting firm and a hedge fund despite having no background in finance -- reportedly become worth an estimated $15 million?
Hillary Clinton recently proposed a new $350 billion government plan to make college more affordable. Certainly, universities spike tuition costs, and student-loan debt has surpassed $1 trillion. Colleges spend money indiscriminately, mostly because they know that the federal government will always back student loans.
Yet, since she left office, Clinton routinely has charged universities $200,000 or more for her brief 30-minute chats. Her half-hour fee is roughly equal to the annual public-university tuition cost for eight students.
It's been said that Clinton is trying to rekindle President Obama's 2012 allegations of a Republican "war on women." That charge and the war against the "1 percent" helped deliver key states to Obama. Renewing that theme, Clinton recently declared on Twitter, "Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported."
Does Clinton's spirited advocacy of "every" survivor include the array of women who have accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct? In other words, does Hillary now trust the testimonies of survivors such as Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey and Paula Jones, whose allegations must be "believed and supported?"
Ms. Clinton has also called for more financial transparency and greater accountability in general -- something needed after scandals at government agencies such as the IRS, VA and GSA. But Clinton's use of a private email server probably violated several federal laws. Her laxity with confidential communications was arguably more egregious than that of Gen. David Petraeus, a national icon who pleaded guilty to mishandling classified materials.
Perhaps Clinton assumes that the electorate is still in the ethical world of the 1990s. Back then, it was somewhat easier to dampen scandals -- at least the ones that didn't involve sex in the White House. But in the age of social media, 24-hour cable TV, instantaneous blogging and a different public attitude toward political corruption and sexual assault, Hillary Clinton now appears to be caught in the wrong century.
Womanizing and sexual coercion can no longer be so easily dismissed. The financial antics of the Clinton Foundation don't past muster amid populist anger at the global profiteering of billionaires. In age of instant Google searches, railing against big money no longer squares with making and enjoying it.
Ms. Clinton at times tries to offset scandals by her pointing to her record as secretary of state. But few believe that her handling of Russia, Iran, China, Benghazi or Islamic terrorism made the world calmer or America more secure.
In debates, Clinton points to her support of Obama's agenda. But the president currently has an approval rating of 46 percent. If the country is in dire need of Clinton's suggested remedies, were the past eight years too short a time to see similar reforms enacted under Obama?
All this confusion raises the question of whether Hillary Clinton is running to complete Bill Clinton's third term, running to cement Barack Obama's legacy -- or running against her prior self.
=======================================================
5)
|
No comments:
Post a Comment