Her Tail Never Stopped Wagging! Sowell on Trump. West on Decimating Our Military. Obama America's Biggest Fool!

Grandpa at 83 and Dagny at 4!                                             
   Most thinking American are appalled at what
              is happening to our culture.
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Yesterday our youngest daughter learned their female rescue dog of 11 years has an incurable cancer. Coda is one of the sweetest dogs a family could have and when Dagny and Blake were born her motherly instincts kicked in and she always placed herself in a position that guarded them.

Abby and Brian are faced  with a difficult position of keeping her out of pain and then having to make the decision dog owners, all too often, have to make.  Sad day in the Nelson household.

We just visited them this past weekend and Coda's tail never stopped wagging.
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Sowell on Trump. When will we learn? (See 1 below.)
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West on decimating our military. When will we learn? (See 2 below.)
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Jackie Mason skewers Bernie. (See 3 below.)
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Obama's  reality is unreal. The man is blind.  Wherever he goes and opens his mouth he makes a fool of himself, America and elevates Carter. (See 4 below.)
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Podcast with Dennis Prager: Click here to listen to podcast with legendary radio talk show host Dennis Prager. 

And the Loathing Left.(see 5 below.)
Then:
Hate education. (See 5a and 5b below.)
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More Administration lying regarding how we are handling Iran and our withheld dollars.  (See 6 below.)
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I have been wrong on the market's direction.  It has done better than I thought it might in the face of first quarter earnings which have been ok but nothing to get overly excited about.

GDP remains sluggish. I have been told the Hispanic segment is growing at 9 per cent which means the rest of the non-Hispanic market has been flat. (The Hispanic sector represents about 30% of our population and that would suggest something around 3% growth eliminating the rest of GDP growth of around 2%)

I could also be wrong on what The Fed will do regarding rates but I doubt they will raise them before the election.

The stocks I suggested did participate in the recent rise and I am adding CSCO to my favorites but
only on a price pullback.
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Reminder for this coming Saturday at 4PM at our home:

Please join us to meet Peter Muller  (6 Pineside Lane) Saturday April 30, at 4 PM.. Peter is challenging an incumbent Circuit Court Judge (there was an article in recent local paper about the race.)

Hope you can come. Please let me know.

Me

598 9251

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So let's end on some Aussie humor: "A bloke's wife went missing while diving off the West Australian Coast.He reported the event, searched fruitlessly and spent a terrible night wondering what may have happened to her. Next morning there's a knock at the door and he was confronted by a couple of police officers, the old Sarge and a younger Constable.The Sarge said, "Mate, we have some news for you. Unfortunately some really bad news, but, some good news, and maybe some more good news.""Well," said the bloke, "I guess I'd better have the bad news first." The Sarge said, "I'm really sorry mate, but your wife is dead. Young Bill here found her lying at about five fathoms in a little cleft in the reef. He got a line around her and we pulled her up, but she was dead."The bloke was naturally distressed and had a bit of a turn, but after a few minutes pulled himself together to ask about the good news. The Sarge said,"Well when we got your wife up there were quite a few really good sized lobsters and a swag of nice crabs attached to her, so we've brought you your share." He handed the bloke a bag with a couple of nice lobsters and four or five crabs in it "Gee-whiz thanks. They're bloody beauties. I guess it's an ill wind and all that...So, what's the other possible good news?" "Well," the Sarge says, "If you fancy a quick trip, young Bill and I get off duty at around 11 o'clock...and we're going to shoot over there and pull her up again".
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Dick
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1)The sudden appearance of Donald Trump on the political horizon last year may have been surprising, but not nearly as surprising as seeing some conservatives supporting him.

Does Trump have conservative principles? Does he have any principles at all, other than promoting Donald Trump? A smorgasbord of political positions -- none of them indicating any serious thought about complicated issues -- is not a principle. Nor is cheering for himself and boasting about all the great things he is going to do as President.

Haven't we seen this movie before? Wasn't Barack Obama going to heal the racial divide, end the partisan bickering in Washington, have the most transparent administration ever, lower the cost of health care and let you keep your own doctor?

Had he actually done all those things, walking on water as an encore would have been an anti-climax. But instead, he did the opposite of all those things.

There was absolutely nothing in Obama's track record that should have led anyone to think that he would even try to do any of the things he declared he was going to do. But why spoil a great vision, and soaring rhetoric, by checking track records?

It was bad enough for the voters to make the colossal mistake of being taken in by appearances and ignoring realities. But to repeat that very same mistake with Trump, immediately after the Obama administration, is truly staggering. How many pied pipers are we going to follow off to parts unknown?

At this late date, there is no point itemizing the many things that demonstrate Trump's gross inadequacies for being President of the United States. Trump himself has demonstrated those gross inadequacies repeatedly, at least weekly and sometimes daily. Those who do not believe their own eyes and ears are certainly not going to believe any words of mine, or of anyone else.

But is that enough? It has been enough politically to put some of the great demagogues of history in power, especially after the existing establishment has discredited itself.

The discredited Weimar Republic in Germany was vulnerable to the verbal attacks by Adolf Hitler that brought him to power. Now we know, too late, that Hitler turned out to be a bigger catastrophe -- for Germany and the world -- than the Weimar Republic.

Donald Trump is not an evil man like Hitler. But his headstrong shallowness and fecklessness make him a dangerous man to have in the White House, with our enemies around the world on the march, and developing intercontinental missiles that can deliver nuclear bombs.

A President of the United States has many heavy responsibilities beyond building a wall and fighting the Republican establishment.
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2)The Hidden Enemy

Allen West

There is a Chinese proverb that states, “May you live in interesting times,” which has become a defining character of these times in which we are living. This new 21st century battlefield has brought a seemingly innumerable level of conflict and conflagrations that expands across the globe. It is a battlefield that has no boundaries or borders, and finds attacks occurring against civilian populations near and far.

It is not just the threat from traditional nation-state actors, but also the proliferation of non-state, non-uniformed, unlawful enemy combatants that makes this a rather complex battle space. The latter enemy blends in with civilian populations as a means of cover. There are nations that provide support and sanctuary for these unlawful actors, enabling their sustainment. What has been a new frontier in this battle has been the use of new information technology, which gives a new and broad platform for the enemy and adversaries to promulgate their violent ideology.

But, there is also another means by which technology is enabling our enemies to be successful on the battlefield.

Tuesday the 26th of April is recognized as World Intellectual Property (IP) Day. According to the Global Intellectual Property Center (GIPC) at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, here are the major impacts of IP for America:
-       Incentivizes innovation and creativity,

-       Creates 40 million jobs, drives 2/3 of our GDP, and ¾ of all US annual exports, and

-       Protects consumer safety by allowing consumers to make informed decisions about the safety, reliability, and quality of the products they purchase.

But there is a very vital aspect of our IP that relates to the most critical function of our federal government -- national security.

These are times when we are decimating our current military force structure. We have an Army that is being cut down to pre-World War II levels. Our U.S. Marine Corps is at World War I levels. Our venerable U.S. Navy, “a global force for good,” is now the smallest Navy we have fielded when analyzing surface warships since 1917 -- and it appears Russia enjoys “buzzing” our Destroyers. Our U.S. Air Force is the smallest and oldest fleet since we created the modern Air Force as a separate service branch. There are those who would say this is all good. Easy for them to say such, when they are not on those front lines for freedom as guardians.

Our defense discretionary budget is approximately 18% of our overall budget. Nearly 64% of our federal budget is spent on the mandatory spending side encompassing Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and the net interest on our ever growing debt. As a percentage of our GDP, defense takes up about 3.2%. Sure, we can find savings in our defense budget. One of the most obvious is to reform our weapons systems acquisition and procurement process – where protection of our IP is paramount. Many believe that we can “afford” to cut back on our manpower requirements because we have a technological edge, advantage. But on this new battlefield, that may just no longer be the case.

If you have not paid requisite attention, there has been a marked increase of cyber-attacks against the United States. This has not just occurred against our military facilities and forces, but has rather been targeted towards our private sector industry, research and development, and institutions of higher learning. In a recent speech delivered to the National Center for Policy Analysis, retired Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn stated that the Chinese have a Cyber Unit with a manning level of some 800,000. In contrast, our US CYBERCOM has between 10-15,000 manpower, and we all know that cyber is another area of this new battlefield.

What are the dangers?

If you have not noticed, China’s new fighter aircraft has a very marked resemblance to our F-35 fighter. And there is another very dangerous aspect of this new hidden enemy: parts counterfeiting. Several years ago, the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) looked into this very problem. In a year-long investigation the SASC examined some 1,800 cases of counterfeit parts, involving a total of more than 1 million individual counterfeit parts found in the military supply chain -- totally unconscionable.

Some of the critical weapon systems where these counterfeit parts were found include helicopter forward-looking infrared, F-16 hostile tracking radar, portable nuclear identification tools, and aircraft pilot displays. There appears to be a very targeted method for these counterfeit parts. In the report from the SASC, former Chairman Senator Carl Levin stated, “Our report outlines how this flood of counterfeit parts, overwhelmingly from China, threatens our national security, the safety of our troops, and American jobs. It underscores China’s failure to police the blatant market in counterfeit parts -- a failure China should rectify.” Senator John McCain chimed in on the subject, stating, “Our committee’s report makes it abundantly clear that vulnerabilities throughout the defense supply chain allow counterfeit electronic parts to infiltrate critical US military systems, risking our security and the lives of the men and women who protect it.”

The National Center for Policy Analysis has developed the “Provide for the Common Defense, Now!” petition, which advocates for reforming the military acquisition and research and development process to eliminate significant cost overruns and guarantee warfighters receive modern weapon systems on time and under budget. If you stand with us, please sign it.

On this World IP Day we can certainly celebrate the incredible innovations and ingenuity resulting from the indomitable American entrepreneurial spirt. But what we must never forget is that exact same innovative capacity and capability is being targeted, and threatens our national security. If we continue decimating our force structure while the hidden enemy unlawfully usurps our technological advantage on the battlefield -- then we are not ensuring that seminal responsibility to “provide for the common defense.”
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3) Comic Jackie Mason skewers Bernie Sanders on Israel stance

Mason tells Aaron Klein Investigative Radio, "If Israel gave up their country but they fought for climate change, he would love Israel."

Jewish funnyman Jackie Mason took US Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders to task Sunday for recent comments the Vermont senator made about Israel.

Speaking in an interview with Aaron Klein Investigative Radio, set to air Sunday on New York's AM 970 The Answer and NewsTalk 990 AM in Philadelphia, Mason took umbrage with Sanders' contention that Israel had used "disproportionate" force during Operation Protective Edge in summer 2014, and with his inflation of the death toll in Gaza during the conflict.

"Here’s a Jew from Brooklyn who never even saw a gentile till he was 28. Obviously, this man has a very, very big sickness. There’s something about being Jewish that makes him self-conscious and nervous. And he has to prove to himself and to the country that he doesn’t favor Israel in any way," Mason said.
Mason, a staunch Israel supporter, claimed that Sanders is "so determined that he’ll tell any lie about Israel that he can think of to say to you: ‘Do you see that? This is proof that I don’t pay for Israel. The fact that I want every Israeli to drop dead for me to prove a point doesn’t matter. If they all get wiped out, it’s not my business.  The main thing is that I’m not favoring Israel.’"

The comic joked that for Sanders, who spent time on a kibbutz in Israel as a young man, climate change is a bigger issue than the Jewish state's security.

"A schmuck like Bernie Sanders pops out who doesn’t even know what’s going on and doesn’t care. Because to him Israel getting wiped out is no problem. Climate change is the only problem. To him, the most important thing in the world is climate change. If Israel gave up their country but they fought for climate change, he would love Israel. In ten minutes, they would be his favorite country."

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4)

Obama's view of reality

People in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Iran and even Europe would likely beg to differ with U.S. President Barack Obama's assessment that we are very lucky to be alive here and now, in the "most peaceful era in human history."

By Boaz Bismuth

U.S. President Barack Obama |  Photo credit: AP

Obviously if we were to return to the 14th century, when bubonic plague was ravaging the globe, or to the early 20th century, when the color of one's skin was enough to determine one's fate, we could perhaps conclude that we are very lucky to be alive here and now, in the "most peaceful era in human history," as U.S. President Barack Obama described it on Monday.

It's entirely uncertain, however, that people in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Nigeria, North Korea and even in the streets of Iran believe Obama is right. Even the capitals of Europe that Obama holds in such esteem, such as Paris and Brussels, are currently under the double threat of Islamic State terrorism and the rise of the radical right. We would excuse people there for being skeptical of the elation expressed by the American president, who apparently will continue to be the president of unprecedented wishful thinking until his term in office ends. Some could even claim that Obama's optimistic view was swayed by the virtual reality glasses he donned at the Hannover Messe in Germany, the world's largest industrial technology trade show. Between you and me, I'd like a pair of those glasses too.

Obama is not responsible for all the ills of our world. He inherited a large number of the conflicts in the world today. But it's hard to say he resolved many of them. It's also hard to argue that he prevented new conflicts from emerging, like the ones here in the Middle East and the one between the Ukrainians and Russians, despite the "reboot" of relations between Moscow and Washington in 2009. That new era should have already been upon us. In actuality, relations between the two countries can best be described as the fourth Ice Age. That's how it is with Obama. That's also how it was with his prognostications about ("junior varsity squad") Islamic State: high hopes that led to hard knocks.

Obama is a president with many good intentions (I would like to hope), but something went wrong for him along the way. The "messiah" president, who in Prague in 2009 called for reducing the world's nuclear weapons arsenals to a minimum until they are one day gone completely, didn't respond when the leader of a country (Syria's Bashar Assad) used chemical weapons against his own people on at least 14 separate occasions. He even signed a nuclear deal with Iran, Assad's partner in crime. The deal he signed in Vienna actually welcomes Iran into the club of nuclear nations, which it will join before little Prince George, the cute toddler he met in London over the weekend, turns 18. Iran is not changing; it is only getting stronger. But the Islamic republic's neighbors should sleep well at night, because this is "the most peaceful, most prosperous, most progressive era in human history," and things have never been better.

Truth be told, Obama is living in a movie we all want a part in. In this movie of his everyone is the good guy, everyone loves one another, and most importantly everyone has really good health insurance. Obama's reality is precisely like the health insurance reforms he forced on Americans: In theory everything is wonderful, but in real life it's not all that great. Maybe this is why 83 senators asked to increase defense aid to Israel -- because the world isn't becoming a safer place, even if Attila the Hun isn't around anymore.

Obama has a tendency to build high hopes. Remember the hullabaloo over his Cairo speech? Remember what happened afterward? It's possible that Obama's words from Hannover on Monday managed to snap even Hosni Mubarak to his feet. Over 80 million Egyptians truly can't recall such tranquility.

The truth is that Obama is a president with exceptional capabilities. He has even managed to jar the mythically unflappable Brits. The American president's intervention in the country's internal politics, by calling on British citizens to vote against leaving the EU, has not only incensed the Brits but according to polls has increased the number of those who favor such an exit.

Some 400,000 Syrians have been slaughtered in their own country. Not since the Second World War has Europe been flooded with so many refugees and migrants. Also not since that war has the radical right in Europe posed such a challenge. The threat of terror has never been as tangible as the threat posed by Islamic State today. And the stagnation presently threatening European markets has never been worse.

But not to worry, although we may be on the precipice of the abyss in many places across the globe, next year, heaven forbid, we could take that large step forward -- among other things, because of Obama's legacy.

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5)

Why the Left Loathes Western Civilization

image: http://jewishworldreview.com/cols2/prager.jpg

By Dennis Prager

This month, Stanford University students voted on a campus resolution that would have their college require a course on Western civilization, as it did until the 1980s.

Stanford students rejected the proposal 1,992 to 347. A columnist at the Stanford Daily explained why: Teaching Western civilization means "upholding white supremacy, capitalism and colonialism, and all other oppressive systems that flow from Western civilizations."
The vote — and the column — encapsulated the left's view: In Europe, Latin America and America, it loathes Western civilization.

Wherever there is conflict between the West — identified as white, capitalist or of European roots — and the non-West, the left portrays the West as the villain.

I am referring to the left, not to liberals. The latter generally venerates Western civilization. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, for example, frequently spoke of defending "Christian civilization." Today, the left would likely revile any Westerner who used such language as xenophobic, racist, and fascist.
The left similarly describes any suggestion that anything Western is superior to anything non-Western. Likewise, it dismisses virtually all Western achievements, but regards criticism of anything non-Western as racist, chauvinistic, imperialist, colonialist, xenophobic, etc.

That is why the left is so protective of Islam. America's left-wing president, Barack Obama, will not use, and does not seem to allow the government to use, the words "Islamic terrorism." And, criticism of Islam is labeled "Islamophobic," thereby morally equating any such criticism with racism. It is not that the left is sympathetic to Islam, for it has contempt for all religions. It is that many Muslims loathe the West, and the enemies of my enemy (the West) must be protected.

That is why the left loathes Israel. If the left actually cared about human rights, women's rights, gay rights, or freedom of speech, religion and press, it would be wildly pro-Israel. But Israel, in the left's view, is white, European and colonialist, or in other words, Western. And the Palestinians are non-Western.

So, the Big Question is, why? Why is the left hostile toward Western civilization?

After decades of considering this question, I have concluded the answer is this: standards.

The left hates standards — moral standards, artistic standards, cultural standards. The West is built on all three, and it has excelled in all three.

Why does the left hate standards? It hates standards because when there are standards, there is judgment. And leftists don't want to be judged.

Thus, Michelangelo is no better than any contemporary artist, and Rembrandt is no greater than any non-Western artist. So, too, street graffiti — which is essentially the defacing of public and private property, and thus serves to undermine civilization — is "art."

Melody-free, harmony-free, atonal sounds are just as good as Beethoven's music. And Western classical music is no better than the music of any non-Western civilization. Guatemalan poets are every bit as worthy of study as Shakespeare.When the Nobel Prize-winning American novelist Saul Bellow asked an interviewer, "Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus? The Proust of the Papuans?" all hell broke loose on the cultural left. Bellow had implied that the greatest writers of fiction were Western.
Why such antagonism? Because if some art is really better than other art, your art may be judged inferior. The narcissism of left-wing thought does not allow for anyone to be better than you artistically or in any other way. Therefore, all art and artists must be equal.

In the moral realm, the same rejection of standards exists. Thus, the left loathed President Ronald Reagan for labeling the Soviet Union an "evil empire," because that would mean America was morally superior to the Soviet Union. And such a judgment was unacceptable. The whole left-wing moral vocabulary is a rejection of Western moral standards: "tolerance," "inclusion," "anti-discrimination" (by definition, standards discriminate), "non-judgmental," and even "income inequality," which deems some peoples' work more valuable than others.

Every civilization had slavery. But only thanks to Judeo-Christian civilization was slavery abolished there, and eventually elsewhere. Nevertheless, to speak about any moral superiority of Western or Judeo-Christian civilization is completely unacceptable, thanks to the left's stranglehold on education and most media.

In this regard, the protection of Islam by the left is so thorough that one cannot even say such obvious truths such as that the status of women has been far superior in the Judeo-Christian West than in the Islamic world. The veil women wear, for example, is dehumanizing. Yet, in a speech at the annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America, a rabbi who, at the time, was the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said that a woman's voluntary choice to wear a head scarf "deserves our respect."

And finally, we come to the left's loathing of the religions of Western civilization — the Judeo-Christian religions, which have clear standards of right and wrong.

Bible-based religions affirm a morally judging God. For the left, that is anathema. For the left, the only judging allowed is leftists' judging of others. No one judges the left — neither man nor God.

5a)

What Hate Education Breeds

By JONATHAN S. TOBIN 

Palestinians have a new idol in their pantheon of heroes and heroines. Her name is Dima al-Wawi and she is 12 years old. But unlike the paths to 

distinction in other societies for children, al-Wawi isn’t a math or science 

whiz or a great athlete. Instead, she’s guilty of attempted murder.

The girl was released on Sunday after serving 4 and-a-half months in jail 

where she was housed with other youngsters. Upon returning to her home village of Halhoul near the city of Hebron, she was greeted as a conquering heroine as both the Fatah Party that runs the Palestinian Authority and 

Hamas competed to shower her with praise. But rather than contemplate the depravity of a society that indoctrinates a little girl to think of murder and the

very real possibility that she might be killed in the attempt as a praiseworthy activity, the coverage of al-Wawi’s release centers mostly on outrage that 

she was imprisoned and the notion that her crime somehow symbolizes the “frustration” of Palestinians about Israeli policies or the existence of 

settlements. And that, in a nutshell, is not only everything that is wrong with 

the culture of Palestinian politics but also what’s wrong with much of what passes for coverage of the Middle East in the international press.

The facts of the case are fairly straightforward. Al-Wawi approached an 

Israeli settlement entrance while concealing a knife under her school 

uniform. After her release, she said her intention was to stab and kill the 

security guard on duty there. But suspecting that she was up to no good, the guard stopped her and ordered her to surrender her weapon. She was 

caught on an amateur video at the time immediately confessing her purpose. She was arrested and tried under military law and then released early.

But the focus on the release is on the fact that if she were an Israeli she 

would have been tried under Israeli law and would not be liable to prison because of her age. That sounds like terrible but the problem with that 

criticism is that the international community doesn’t want the Jewish state to apply its law to the West Bank. There is also the fact that if Palestinian 

Authority or Jordanian law were applied to the case, treatment would not 

have been more lenient.

But the issue here isn’t which juvenile court system and set of laws were at 

the disposal of the authorities. It’s why a 12-year-old girl would think killing 

the only Jew within her reach and perhaps dying herself in the process 

would be something that her peers and her society would applaud?

The answer is that in the educational and cultural environment created by 

the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, the girl was entirely correct. 

Those who murder or try to murder random Jews are treated as heroes and martyrs and praised by the highest officials as well as public opinion. Lest 

we think that this is a purely political protest or a function of anger about settlements, it is useful to read the girl’s comments. Upon her release she spouted no talking points about settlements or a desire for a Palestinian 

state. All she was interested in was martyrdom and the superstar status 

such a crime would give her among her peers and the people in her village.

That makes it clear that rather that what is being drummed into her head 

and those of other Palestinian children is a doctrine that is based in religion 

and religious hatred of Jews and Israel, not a dispute about borders or 

frustration with the lack of progress toward peace.

It is not an exaggeration to say that what her society has done to Dima al-

Wawi is nothing short of child abuse. For generations, Palestinian leaders 

have sought to sacrifice their children on the altar of hatred for Israel. They 

did so in the first intifada and then again in the second. Now, again they encourage children to seek out death in the so-called stabbing intifada. 

Their only purpose is to create more casualties, not so much the Jews they 

seek to victimize, but to pile up more Palestinian bodies that can be 

exhibited to the international community as alleged proof of Israel’s hard-

hearted occupation. Even those who might wish for a more non-violent way 

to engage the Israelis are helpless to stop kids like al-Wawi from acting in 

this manner because every aspect of Palestinian culture — religious and 

secular education, television and even popular music — aims at creating an environment in which actions such as hers are praiseworthy rather than aberrant. Nothing, not even preserving the lives of their own children, 

seems to be a deterrent to the cult of murder and suicide that dominates Palestinian life.

For all of the debate what policies the Jewish state should pursue in order to facilitate peace, it must be understood that the circumstances that transform

 a 12-year-old schoolgirl into a would-be murderer transcend those 

arguments. No matter what you think about settlements or where you 

believe the border between a Jewish state and a Palestinian one ought to 

be, Dima al-Wawi’s story illustrates the fact that so long as her crime is the sort of thing that makes a kid a hometown heroine, peace is impossible.

Al-Wawi sought to attack the only Jew she could reach. Others have 

attacked people in Jerusalem or in Tel Aviv. Their goal is the same: kill 

Jews or those that they think are Jews because they have no right to be anywhere in the country and not just in West Bank settlements. The same Palestinian mindset that produced her also created the young Hamas 

suicide bomber that set off an explosive on a Jerusalem bus earlier this 

month. Like Dima al-Wawi’s family, his affluent and well-educated parents praised him and considered his actions justifiable because of the 

identity of his victims.

No matter what Israel does or how much land it gives up — as it did in 

Gaza in 2005 when settlements were disbanded and every soldier and 

settler withdrawn — there will not be peace so long as the Palestinians 

educate their children to hate and think slaughtering Jews is their national 

sport. The sight of a 12-year-old girl being given a parade on her return 

home after attempting to commit murder tells us everything that we need to 

know about how sick Palestinian society has become. Peace won’t be 

possible until Palestinians find a way to cure themselves of this illness.


5b)

"Plant a knife in the heart of your enemy" - Fatah student movement election  campaign j    Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik Click to view on PMW's website Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement is promoting its student movement Shabiba's election  campaign at Birzeit University by posting the above poster on its official Facebook page. The poster shows a knife dripping with blood, shaped as the PA's map of "Palestine" that  includes the PA areas as well as all of Israel. The entire map is painted in the colors of the Palestinian flag, implying Palestinian political sovereignty over Israel. Text on the poster says: "Plant it [the knife] in the heart of your enemy." [Official Fatah  Facebook page, April 26, 2016] Palestinian Media Watch has shown that both Fatah and the PA in statements and visual  expressions reject the idea of a two-state solution, and instead present a future with only one  state of "Palestine," completely erasing Israel. Fatah has also celebrated the stabbing murders  during the current terror campaign.

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6)

Obama Admin Accused of 

Misleading Congress on Cash Release to Iran

Lawmakers say administration offering contradictory facts about payouts

By Adam Kredo - Washington Free Beacon

The Obama administration faces accusations it has been misleading Congress about 

the amount and destination of sanctions relief being provided to Iran as part of last 

summer’s nuclear agreement, according to lawmakers and congressional sources who expressed anger at the administration over a range of contradictory facts being offered 

about the payouts.

Secretary of State John Kerry came under scrutiny last week after saying in a 

statement that Iran has received only about $3 billion in sanctions relief to date—a f

igure far smaller than the $100 billion estimate administration officials had previously 

said Iran would receive under the deal. It also contradicts statements from top Iranian officials that they had regained control of $100 billion in foreign reserves unfrozen under the deal.

The statement came amid congressional allegations, detailed by the Washington Free Beacon, that Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Javid Zarif are engaged in a 

campaign to facilitate even more sanctions relief than Iran is entitled to under the deal. Congressional sources suggested that Kerry’s statements about the amount and nature

of this money might be part of that campaign.

The issue has frustrated lawmakers who remain concerned that Iran will use this newly available money to fund its global terrorism operations.

Attempts by congressional offices to clarify the source of Kerry’s claim have gone 

unmet by the State Department, which also declined repeated requests from the Free Beacon to provide specific estimates as to how much money Iran will be able to 

access under the deal.

“Do you remember the debate over how much money Iran was going to get?” Kerry 

asked during a recent speech before supporters of the left-leaning advocacy group J 

Street. “You heard—sometimes you hear some of the presidential candidates putting a mistaken figure out of 155 billion. I’ve never heard—we never thought it would be that.”

“Others thought it would be about $100 billion because there was supposedly $100 

billion that was owed, and so forth,” Kerry said. “We calculated it to be about $55 billion 

when you really take a hard look at the economy and what is happening. Guess what, 

folks—you know how much they have received to date as I stand here tonight? About 

$3 billion. So what we said to people was true.”

The State Department has been unable to provide congressional officials with specific 

details regarding the source of Kerry’s claim, prompting accusations from some that the administration is obfuscating details about the amount of money Iran will gain 

access to under the nuclear deal.

“The secretary was making the point that the claims that $100 or $150 billion in Iranian 

assets would be unfrozen were, as we always knew, wrong,” a State Department official informed congressional sources following a request for information on Kerry’s figure, according to a copy of that exchange obtained by the Free Beacon. “We have estimated that as a result of this lifting of financial and banking secondary sanctions, Iran’s usable 

liquid assets are about $50 billion, of the approximately $100 billion in its own funds in overseas accounts.”

This estimate “is based on our awareness that Iran nominally has about $100 billion 

dollars total in foreign exchange assets overseas, with about $50 billion already 

committed,” the official said. “On the specific amount of money the Iranians have used 

so far, I don’t have anything to add. I don’t think anyone would have expected that Iran 

would use all of its estimated $50 billion abroad in three months since implementation 

day.”

The State Department did not respond to further attempts by congressional officials to 

discern the source of these claims.

A State Department official would not provide the Free Beacon with a total estimate of 

how much Iran would receive in unfrozen assets as a result of the deal.

The situation has left some in Congress frustrated over what they call attempts by the administration to mislead about the total amount of money Iran will receive.

“While bragging to J Street, Secretary of State Kerry inexplicably claimed Iran has only ‘received’ $3 billion in sanctions relief under the nuclear deal,” Sen. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) 

told the Free Beacon. “The administration and its supporters won’t hold Iran fully 

accountable for ballistic missile tests and now they are obfuscating the nuclear deal’s 

financial benefits to Iran.”

Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.), a member of the House intelligence committee, also 

criticized the administration for rebuffing attempts to fully determine the amount of 

sanctions relief being awarded to Iran.

“Secretary Kerry himself has acknowledged that some of this money will end up in the 

hands of terrorists,” Pompeo told the Free Beacon. “The State Department’s inability, 

or refusal, to accurately estimate the amount of money the Islamic Republic of Iran is receiving raises even more serious questions.”

“Whether Iran has received $3 billion in sanctions relief so far, as Secretary of State 

John Kerry seems to think, or whether it will get $150 billion, as other experts estimate, 

it is all far too much money to be flowing to the world’s largest state sponsor of 

terrorism,” Pompeo said.

The claim also has rankled senior Republican foreign policy aides in Congress, who 

recently circulated an internal email in the Senate disputing Kerry’s claim.

With the subject line “When does $100 billion = $3 billion?”, the email reads, “When 

you’re the secretary of state trying to mislead the American people about the economic benefits redounding to Iran under the nuclear agreement,” according to a copy 

obtained by the Free Beacon.

“It is completely misleading for Secretary Kerry to suggest that the economic benefit 

Iran has received under the JCPOA thus far is only $3 billion,” the email continues. 

“Iran has been given access to $100 billion in its foreign exchange reserves and its 

economy receives the benefit of that, even if it chooses not to repatriate all those funds. In fact, it would be financial malpractice for it to repatriate all of those reserves 

immediately. Having access to all of those funds, while keeping some of them outside 

the country, presents an economic benefit to Iran.”

“No matter how the secretary of state may wish to minimize the economic benefits 

accruing to Iran under the JCPOA, the simple fact remains, the Iranian economy is 

benefiting from access to $100 billion as a function of sanctions relief under the Iran 

nuclear agreement,” the email concludes.

One senior congressional aide who works on the Iran issue told the Free Beacon that 

the State Department may not be able to prove Kerry’s claim.

“The Iranian government says the nuclear deal gave them access to roughly $100 

billion in previously frozen assets in foreign accounts, yet Secretary Kerry went before 

J Street to claim that Iran only received ‘about $3 billion’ in sanctions relief,” the source 

said. “I don’t know why the administration adamantly refuses to detail the facts 

underlying Secretary Kerry’s curious claim, unless there are no facts to actually detail.”

A recent investigation by the Congressional Research Service determined that Iran has

been spending billions to pay terrorist fighters. Iran’s defense budget is believed to 

range anywhere from $14 billion and $30 billion a year, with a large portion of that 

going to fund terrorist groups and rebel fighters in a number of countries.

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