Family off to St Patrick's Day Parade and Blake After The Parade

++++++++++++++++++++++++
I have mentioned this in the past but when I posted the article on the U.N's continued indictment of Israel, Thursday evening, I forgot to mention the author was Richard "Andy" Falk, my college fraternity brother. When and why Andy became a hateful anti- Israel Jew, I do not know. I remember he was very bright, somewhat withdrawn. Perhaps during his post college days he fell on his head.

"That it was drafted by Richard Falk, a man who has repeatedly made biased and deeply offensive comments about Israel and espoused ridiculous conspiracy theories, including about the 9/11 terrorist attacks, is equally unsurprising. The United States stands with our ally Israel and will continue to oppose biased and anti-Israel actions across the U.N. system and around the world."
+++++++++++++
Ryan's blind spot?

I have made the same comment about Ryan that Kraushaar makes. Ryan is a solid policy wonk who might be missing the big picture.

Is Ryan leading his disunited House into a wall and leaving those who voted for Republicans scratching their head and asking how self-destructive can they be? Republicans have a once in a lifetime opportunity to produce a health care bill that is vastly better than Obamacare. What have they been doing for the last seven years? Did they think they would never be in office again? Why did they wait to resolve the issues that divide them until now?

Republicans need to set our nation on a fiscally sane course. They have an enviable chance to "Make America Better." So what are they doing? They are fighting among themselves, demonstrating they are incapable of governing and thus, appearing foolish.

Will Republican politicians prove they are excellent at slaying the golden opportunity goose?

I do believe no Republican wants their finger prints on legislation defeating a Republican Health Care Bill.

My friend, Kim, thinks otherwise. Instead, what she sees is a return to old fashion politics which means heavy arm twisting, pressured negotiations and trade-offs.

Let her words reach God's ears.(See 1, 1a, 1b and 1c below.)
===
Pelosi continues to believe Russians have a strangle hold on Trump and, therefore, wants him to release all his tax returns.

My advice to Pelosi: you need to impeach Trump first so you can learn what you needed to know afterwards just like you told us to do when you rammed Obamacare down the nation's throat along while lying about keeping our doctor.
+++
Don't widen the plate. Simple but profound. (See 2 below.)
+++++++++++++
Are Iran and N Korea serious? (See 3, 3a and 3b below.)

Meanwhile:

Last night, the Israeli Air Force conducted an operation inside Syria. In response, the Syrian government launched anti-aircraft missiles at the Israeli planes. While the jets were able to evade the threat, the missiles were headed toward the Israeli home front.

However, thanks to your work with Congress and investment in AIPAC, Israel was able to use one of the most advanced missile defense technologies in active military service to intercept an incoming missile. The Arrow missile defense system was used for the first time, and the threat was eliminated.

In 2016, you helped secure $146 million for the Arrow program, as part of $487 million in U.S.-Israel missile defense funding. In total, the United States has provided more than $2.5 billion for the Arrow program since 1990.

As the threats persist, we will remain ever more determined to keep Israel and the Israeli people safe. We are currently lobbying Congress to ensure Israel receives the $600.7 million in missile defense funding for fiscal year 2017—funds it needs to defend itself from a growing array of rocket and missile threats. These funds will support the next generation of the Arrow system, in addition to the Iron Dome and David Sling’s systems.

Thank you for helping ensure we have the resources to lobby Congress to fund critical programs like Arrow. Today's news wouldn't have happened without your commitment to our work together.

Mark Kleinman
AIPAC Southeastern States Director
===
A U.S president finally gets tough with the U.N. (See 4 below.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dick
+++++++++++++++++++++
1)

Paul Ryan’s Political Blind Spot

By pushing through an Obamacare replacement that has little support with the public or his caucus, he’s risking a major political backlash against the GOP.

By Josh Kraushaar

House Speaker Paul Ryan is a brilliant policy wonk, but he seems oblivious to the populist political forces that propelled Donald Trump to the presidency. And after this month’s display of uneven health care salesmanship by the White House, it’s not clear that Trump appreciates how the speaker’s health care legislation threatens to alienate the working-class voters who provided his narrow margin of victory in last year’s presidential election.

The emerging mess over selling Ryan’s version of health care reform is exposing an unpleasant political reality for the fiscally responsible wing of the Republican Party: People like free stuff, and it’s awfully difficult to take entitlements away after they’re granted. Ryan’s entire career has been based on the sunny belief that well-intentioned reforms have a sizable constituency of voters worried about budget-busting government giveaways. But there’s a long trail of evidence that points the other way. Just look at Trump’s winning campaign message, unique for a Republican, pledging to protect entitlements.

President George W. Bush learned that the hard way when he tackled
Social Security reform at the beginning of his second term. Although Bush claimed a mandate from his reelection, many nervous Republicans quickly defected as Democrats effectively exploited voter anxiety about privatizing a long-standing public program. In 2012, when Ryan was tapped as Mitt Romney’s running mate, Romney distanced himself from the “Path to Prosperity” budget blueprint that Ryan had championed in the House. That didn’t stop Democrats from slamming the ticket for supporting cuts to Medicare—one major reason why the Romney-Ryan ticket ran poorly among working-class voters, especially in the Midwestern swing states that would go on to support Trump in 2016.

Even President Obama’s signature health care legislation created both political winners and losers, which is the main reason it became such a polarizing law. Politically speaking, its fatal flaw was that it redistributed benefits from the young to the old, and from the wealthy to the poor. It placed inflexible mandates on younger Americans and small businesses, while raising premiums for many who bought insurance on the individual market. All that disruption came at a massive political cost, including both chambers of Congress.

So it’s surprising that Ryan didn’t pick up any political lessons despite having a front-row seat to appraise the defects of Obamacare. For all the attention being paid to the 29 disruptive Freedom Caucus members in the House, it’s the 36 Republican members in competitive districts who are much more important to the speaker’s future. While many are remaining tight-lipped now, there’s palpable nervousness that they’re being forced to cast a politically poisonous vote for legislation that has little chance of passing through the Senate.

Remember: It’s the House that is potentially in play for 2018, not the Senate. Ryan is risking his party’s comfortable control of the lower chamber on a bet that repealing and replacing Obamacare is the top priority for Americans. And he’s doing it without energetic backing from President Trump, and without even attempting to win over red-state Democrats up for reelection in 2018.

Rep. Darrell Issa of California, regarded as the most vulnerable House Republican, has already come out against the legislation in its current form. Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, one of the most pro-Trump voices in the Senate, has been an outspoken conservative critic of Ryan’s plan. It’s no coincidence that his home state has seen the largest reduction in the uninsured between 2013 and 2015. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, representing the Trumpiest state in the country, was one of the first four GOP senators to criticize the Ryan legislation over concerns about Medicaid funding.

The fact that the criticisms are coming from states where Trump won overwhelmingly should be especially concerning to the White House. The most outspoken senatorial critics of Ryan’s legislation hail from Ohio, Kentucky, Arkansas, Texas, West Virginia, and Utah—all solidly GOP states in last year’s election. The fact that economic self-interest is trumping political partisanship on this issue should be a major red flag to Republicans. In fact, a new Democratic survey of Obama-Trump voters (conducted by Anzalone-Liszt Grove Research) found that 58 percent of them viewed Obamacare favorably. This is the new GOP constituency that championed Trump’s populism but never was comfortable with traditional Republican orthodoxy.

As one dejected Democratic pollster told me after the election: “The only way we can win back Obama-Trump voters is on Planned Parenthood cuts or if they over reach on health care.” The GOP strategy is playing right into Democratic hands. It’s the equivalent of the Atlanta Falcons getting pass-happy despite holding a 25-point lead over the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl. The GOP’s political maxim should be akin to the Hippocratic Oath: First, do no harm. Instead, they are endangering their most vulnerable members.

1a) The Republican ObamaCare Choke

If they blow health-care reform, why would anyone vote Republican again?

By DANIEL HENNINGER

Less than three months into full control of government and the chance to reshape the

American system for a generation, Republicans are doing something no one thought

possible: They are reinventing the circular firing squad.

Even a politician of such limitless cynicism as Chuck Schumer is agog: “We are on

offense and united. They are on defense and divided, the opposite of what people would

have predicted a month or two ago.”

Maybe in politics, genes really are destiny. Under pressure from a CBO “score,” the

genetic disposition of Republican politicians is to go wobbly. The disposition of

movement conservatives is to get out the long knives and start carving up other

conservatives.

The result will be guaranteed political defeat for years if congressional Republicans

choke at the chance to repeal and replace ObamaCare.

The Beltway bubble has never looked so big or real as now, to wit: The Trump-Ryan-

Price health-care reform bill is too tough on Medicaid. Or it isn’t tough enough. It will

break the Trump entitlement bond with the middle class. We want the 2015 repeal-only

bill. Let ObamaCare collapse. What’s the rush? We can do this reform some other time.

The American people didn’t endure and survive the 2016 presidential election for this.

The public that voted Donald Trump into the White House will drive Republicans into a

deserved wilderness if they go back on the only promise anyone can remember them

making the past six years.

The day the Republicans clutch on this reform, there will be six-column headlines across

the Washington Post and New York Times: “Trump Abandons Promises on Health Care.”

It will be a fast ride downhill from there. That is because the health-care reform bill is

linked inextricably to the politics of tax reform, the second pillar of the Trump legislative

agenda.

The CBO score gifted the Republicans with $1 trillion in savings over a decade from the

adjusted spending baseline, a number that would carry forward into the score for the tax

bill, enabling the lower tax rates on income and capital that will lift the economy.

(Remember that promise?)

The cruder political point is that if health-care reform fails under media-driven Beltway

pressure, the same timid people will next block the historic tax-reform bill with the same

tactics. They will peck it to death with misgivings. Political courage used to have a

post election shelf life of about 12 months. Now it has the life cycle of a moth.

The logic is inescapable of what will happen if reform of both health care and taxes goes

out with a whimper. As President Trump’s political capital and approval decline under a

barrage of media-payback glee, and as the clock moves closer to the midterm election, Republicans will head for the tall weeds on everything. The Trump presidency will be

over in under a year.

The conservative “friends” counseling Mr. Trump to give up now on health-care reform

will move overnight to the next darling, say, Sen. Mike Lee who wrote on the Heritage Foundation’s blog Monday that Republicans should vote for repeal only and “take our

time” on reform.

In the wake of repeal only, the U.S. health insurance market would be reduced to a

shambles. After that, the next major party will be the Libertarians, because the GOP will

be defunct. Maybe that’s what cable-TV star Rand Paul is up to.

An important separation may be occurring with this bill. On one side you have the status

quo. It’s not just the American Medical Association and others who created the Obama-

Care that failed and want its replacement to fail. The status quo is also the activist groups

and pundits whose status and power are tied to keeping their opinions first and all else

second.

Across from this status quo that is the one real thing that drove the 2016 election: the

voting public’s desire for change. The 2016 election seemed like a radical upheaval, but

it was mainly a cry for a restoration.

That means restoring the balance of power between the branches of government that was

undone by Barack Obama. When some members of Congress say they “won’t vote” for

the health-care bill, what they are saying is: “Let’s negotiate. I want something for my

vote.” Mr. Trump’s personal willingness to do business with his opposition restores this

normal reality to American politics.

The election was also about resetting the balance of authority between Washington and

the states—a key goal of this reform’s Medicaid provisions. The Democrats are united in opposition because they’ve become a rule-from-Washington party. But the Republicans?

If this bill fails, there is only one Plan B. It will be a single-payer system enacted after

2020 with votes from what’s left of the Republican party after—Donald Trump is right

about this—they get wiped out in 2018 and lose the presidency two years later. After

blowing it on ObamaCare, why would anyone vote for them again?

1b) The real world of Obamacare repeal

By Charles Krauthammer

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, but for governments it’s not that easy. Once

something is given — say, health insurance coverage to 20 million Americans — you take

it away at your peril. This is true for any government benefit, but especially for health

care. There’s a reason not one Western democracy with some system of national health

care has ever abolished it.

The genius of the left is to keep enlarging the entitlement state by creating new

giveaways that are politically impossible to repeal. For 20 years, Republicans railed

against the New Deal. Yet, when they came back into office in 1953, Eisenhower didn’t

just keep Social Security, he expanded it.

People hated Obamacare for its highhandedness, incompetence and cost. At the same

time, its crafters took great care to create new beneficiaries and new expectations.

Which makes repeal very complicated.

The Congressional Budget Office projects that, under House Speaker Paul Ryan’s

Obamacare replacement bill, 24 million will lose insurance within 10 years, 14 million

after the first year.

Granted, the number is highly suspect. CBO projects 18 million covered by the

Obamacare exchanges in 2018. But the number today is about 10 million. That means

the CBO estimate of those losing coverage is already about 8 million too high.

Nonetheless, there will be losers. And their stories will be plastered wall to wall across

the media as sure as night follows day.

That scares GOP moderates. And yet the main resistance to Ryan comes from

conservative members complaining that the bill is not ideologically pure enough. They

mock it as Obamacare Lite.

For example, Ryan wants to ease the pain by phasing out Medicaid expansion through

2020. The conservative Republican Study Committee wants it done next year. This is

crazy. For the sake of two years’ savings, why would you risk a political crash landing?

Moreover, the idea that you can eradicate Obamacare root and branch is fanciful. For all

its catastrophic flaws, Obamacare changed expectations. Does any Republican propose

returning to a time when you can be denied health insurance because of a preexisting

condition?

It’s not just Donald Trump who ran on retaining this new, yes, entitlement. Everyone did.

But it’s very problematic. If people know that they can sign up for insurance after they get

sick, the very idea of insurance is undermined. People won’t sign up when healthy, and

the insurance companies will go broke.

So what do you do? Obamacare imposed a monetary fine if you didn’t sign up, for which

the Ryan bill substitutes another mechanism, less heavy-handed but still government-

mandated.

The purists who insist upon entirely escaping the heavy hand of government are

dreaming. The best you can hope for is to make it less intrusive and more rational, as in

the Ryan plan’s block-granting Medicaid.

Or instituting a more realistic age-rating system. Older patients use six times as much

health care as their younger counterparts, yet Obamacare decreed, entirely arbitrarily,

that the former could be charged insurance premiums no more than three times that of

the latter. The GOP bill changes the ratio from 3-to-1 to 5-to-1.

Premiums better reflecting risk constitute a major restoration of rationality. (It’s how life insurance works.) Under Obamacare, the young were unwilling to be swindled and

refused to sign up. Without their support, the whole system is thus headed into a death

spiral of looming insolvency.

Rationality, however, has a price. The CBO has already predicted a massive increase in

premiums for 60-year-olds. That’s the headline.

There is no free lunch. GOP hard-liners must accept that Americans have become

accustomed to some new health-care benefits, just as moderates have to brace

themselves for stories about the inevitable losers in any reform. That’s the political price
for fulfilling the seven-year promise of repealing and replacing Obamacare.

Unless, of course, you go the full Machiavelli and throw it all back on the Democrats.

How? Republicans could forget about meeting the arcane requirements of

“reconciliation” legislation (which requires only 51 votes in the Senate) and send the

Senate a replacement bill loaded up with everything conservative — including tort

reform and insurance competition across state lines. That would require 60 Senate

votes. Let the Democrats filibuster it to death — and take the blame when repeal-and-

replace fails and Obamacare carries on and then collapses under its own weight.

Upside: You reap the backlash. Downside: You have to live with your conscience.

1c)The Republicans Relearn Politics

The health-care bill is far from dead, and a contentious debate is a sign of vigor.

By KIMBERLEy Strassel

With a hat-tip to Mark Twain, reports of the death of the Republican health-care bill have

been greatly, vastly, even bigly exaggerated. What we are witnessing isn’t a legislative

demise, but the rebirth of a long-lost Washington concept: politics.

From the moment Speaker Paul Ryan unveiled his ObamaCare repeal-and-replace bill,

the media have declared it a doomed project. The newspapers have run out of synonyms

for division, disunity, discord, conflict, struggle, mess. Since the only thing the media

enjoy more than bashing Republicans is helping Republicans bash each other, the cable

stations have offered a nonstop loop of a handful of GOP naysayers and grandstanders

(cue Rand Paul) who wish the bill ill.

Perhaps the talking heads can be excused for their dim outlook. The Obama

administration marked one of the more dysfunctional and destructive periods in

Washington—eight years of threats, executive rule, non-communication and opposition

politics. So it is undoubtedly confusing for some people suddenly to watch an honest-to-

goodness legislative process, with all its negotiating, horse-trading and consensus-

building.

–– ADVERTISEMENT ––

Under prior management, Nancy Pelosi did her thing, Harry Reid did his thing, President

Obama did his thing, and the three tried not to talk if at all possible. The Obama

legislative affairs team couldn’t have found Capitol Hill with a map.

Today’s negotiations over the health bill feature a White House that is working hand-in-

hand with congressional leaders to get to yes. Even as the critics looped on cable TV, the

Trump administration was working with House leaders on a substantive amendment to

the bill to address conservative concerns before the legislation hits the floor.

Vice President Mike Pence held a listening session Wednesday with the Republican Study

Committee, an influential bloc of 170 House conservatives. President Trump met last

week with conservative activists. Sources confirm daily telephone round robins among

Mr. Ryan, Mitch McConnell, President Trump, Mr. Pence, White House chief of staff

Reince Priebus, and Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price.

One sign of progress: Rep. Mark Meadows (of the Freedom Caucus) and Sen. Ted Cruz

(of Cruz-Still-For-President) penned a joint op-ed Thursday for this newspaper’s online

edition, laying out their demands for the health-care bill. These two super-critics have not

only refused to walk away from the negotiating table but are positioning themselves

potentially to take credit for changes.

President Obama disdained Congress and didn’t want to legislate. He waited to see if he

liked what his Democratic underlings brought him. Today veterans of the legislative

process are professing admiration for the way Mr. Trump is handling this deal.

On the one hand, the president has made clear that the Ryan bill must be the vehicle for

repeal and replace, and that the consequences of failure would be severe. His rally

planned for Monday in Kentucky (cue Rand Paul again) is designed to demonstrate the

pressure he can exert on Republican holdouts.

On the other hand, Mr. Trump has wisely refrained from publicly committing to the

specifics of the bill, instead using behind-the-scenes meetings to listen, negotiate, nudge.

He has, to his credit, ignored all those putative allies telling him to ditch Mr. Ryan & Co.

Speaker Ryan is avoiding his predecessor’s mistakes, too. During the Obama years,

Speaker John Boehner struggled to control his conference and the legislative process.

True, Mr. Ryan is negotiating, but he’s also relentlessly driving the bill through the

chamber. By Thursday, it had cleared three committees, with only three GOP defections.

Next up is the Rules Committee, and then it comes to the floor. Mr. Ryan is banking on

these deadlines to drive Republicans to make their final deals and then get behind the bill.

He also seems to understand his chamber’s outsize role here. The bill can pass the House

only with conservative support. Once gained, that support will make it much harder for

GOP senators to balk. Leadership will be able to focus on the demands of a much smaller

number of skeptics, and Mr. Trump will be able to target his considerable powers on

defectors.

Could all this break down? Yes, but then again, a bill dies only when leadership stops

pushing it. Mr. Ryan shows no sign of stopping. This is how it works. Go read your old

copy of “Showdown at Gucci Gulch,” which tells how the 1986 tax reform was “dead” a

dozen times—until it wasn’t.

This process takes time because the GOP is itself relearning the political craft. It was easy

in the Obama years to back “perfect” House legislation, since it would never get through

the Senate. It was easier to oppose than it is to propose. Some conservative lawmakers

seem to have realized only now that they’d have been better off working in their

committees to improve today’s health-care bill than to complain and then later ask for

changes.

Is health-care reform inevitable? No. But is it a lost cause? Not even close. Oh, this will

be ugly and messy and painful. But only because that’s how real, old-fashioned politics

works.

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2)Twenty years ago, in Nashville , Tennessee , during the first week of

January, 1996, more than 4,000 baseball coaches descended upon the Opryland Hotel for the 52nd annual ABCA's convention.

While I waited in line to register

with the hotel staff, I heard other more veteran coaches rumbling about the

lineup of speakers scheduled to present during the weekend. One name, in particular, kept resurfacing, always with

the same sentiment — “John Scolinos is here? Oh, man, worth every penny of my airfare.”

Who is John Scolinos, I wondered. No matter; I was just happy to be there.

In 1996, Coach Scolinos was 78 years old and five years retired from a college coaching career that began in

1948. He shuffled to the stage to an impressive standing ovation, wearing

dark polyester pants, a light blue shirt,

and a string around his neck from which home plate hung — a full-sized, stark-

white home plate.

Seriously, I wondered, who is this guy?

After speaking for twenty-five

minutes, not once mentioning the prop hanging around his neck, Coach

Scolinos appeared to notice the

snickering among some of the coaches. Even those who knew Coach Scolinos

had to wonder exactly where he was

going with this, or if he had simply

forgotten about home plate since he’d gotten on stage. Then, finally …

“You’re probably all wondering why I’m wearing home plate around my neck,”

he said, his voice growing irascible. I laughed along with the others, acknowledging the possibility. “I may be

old, but I’m not crazy. The reason I

stand before you today is to share with

you baseball people what I’ve learned in my life, what I’ve learned about home plate

in my 78 years.”

Several hands went up when Scolinos asked how many Little League coaches were in the room. “Do you know how

wide home plate is in Little League?”

          After a pause, someone offered, “Seventeen inches?”, more of a question than answer.

          “That’s right,” he said. “How about in Babe Ruth’s day? Any Babe Ruth coaches in the house?” Another long pause.

          “Seventeen inches?” a guess from another reluctant coach.

          “That’s right,” said Scolinos. “Now, how many high school coaches do we

have in the room?” Hundreds of hands

shot up, as the pattern began to appear. “How wide is home plate in high school baseball?”

“Seventeen inches,” they said, sounding more confident.

“You’re right!” Scolinos barked.

“And you college coaches, how wide is home plate in college?”

          “Seventeen inches!” we said, in unison.

          “Any Minor League coaches here? How wide is home plate in pro ball?”............“Seventeen inches!”

          “RIGHT! And in the Major

Leagues, how wide home plate is in the Major Leagues?

“Seventeen inches!”

“SEV-EN-TEEN INCHES!” he confirmed, his voice bellowing off the

walls. “And what do they do with a Big League pitcher who can’t throw the ball

over seventeen inches?” Pause. “They send him to Pocatello !” he hollered,

drawing raucous laughter. “What they

don’t do is this: they don’t say, ‘Ah, that’s okay, Jimmy. If you can’t hit a seventeen-inch target? We’ll make it eighteen

inches or nineteen inches. We’ll make

it twenty inches so you have a better

chance of hitting it. If you can’t hit that,

let us know so we can make it wider still, say twenty-five inches.'”

Pause. “Coaches… what do we do

when your best player shows up late to practice? or when our team rules forbid facial hair and a guy shows up unshaven? What if he gets caught drinking? Do we hold him accountable? Or do we change the rules to fit him? Do we widen home plate? "

The chuckles gradually faded as four thousand coaches grew quiet, the fog

lifting as the old coach’s message began

to unfold. He turned the plate toward himself and, using a Sharpie, began to

draw something. When he turned it

toward the crowd, point up, a house was revealed, complete with a freshly drawn door and two windows. “This is the

problem in our homes today. With our marriages, with the way we parent our

kids. With our discipline.

We don’t teach accountability to our kids, and there is no consequence for failing

to meet standards. We just widen the

plate!”

Pause. Then, to the point at the

top of the house he added a small

American flag. “This is the problem in

our schools today. The quality of our education is going downhill fast and teachers have been stripped of the tools they need to be successful, and to

educate and discipline our young people. We are allowing others to widen home plate! Where is that getting us?”

Silence. He replaced the flag with a Cross. “And this is the problem in the Church, where powerful people in

positions of authority have taken

advantage of young children, only to

have such an atrocity swept under the

rug for years. Our church leaders are widening home plate for themselves!

And we allow it.”

“And the same is true with our government. Our so called

representatives make rules for us that

don’t apply to themselves. They take

bribes from lobbyists and foreign

countries. They no longer serve us. And we allow them to widen home plate! We

see our country falling into a dark abyss while we just watch.”

I was amazed. At a baseball convention where I expected to learn something about curve balls and bunting and how to run better practices, I had learned something far more valuable.

From an old man with home plate strung around his neck, I had learned

something about life, about myself,

about my own weaknesses and about

my responsibilities as a leader. I had to
hold myself and others accountable to
that which I knew to be right, lest our families, our faith, and our society
continue down an undesirable path.

“If I am lucky,” Coach Scolinos concluded, “you will remember one thing from this old coach today.

It is this: "If we fail to hold ourselves to a higher standard, a standard of what we know to be right; if we fail to hold our spouses and our children to the same standards, if we are unwilling or unable

to provide a consequence when
they do not meet the standard; and if our schools and churches and our
government fail to hold themselves accountable to those they serve, there is but one thing to look forward to …”

With that, he held home plate in

front of his chest, turned it around, and revealed its dark black backside, “…We have dark days ahead!.”

His message was clear: “Coaches, keep your players—no matter how good they are—your own children, your churches, your government, and most of
all, keep yourself at seventeen inches."

"Don't widen the plate."

+++++++++++++++++

3)Has Iran's success in Syria made it an

arena for longer-term conflict?

Having spent heavily to preserve its geopolitical link to Hezbollah, Iran appears to be settling in for a long presence in Syria.

That has caught the attention of the US and Israel, which fears a
widening of its Southern Lebanon front to the Golan Heights.

By Nicholas Blanford

BEIRUT, LEBANON—Having successfully propped up the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against an array of armed rebel groups for more than six years,

Iran appears to be preparing the ground for a long-term presence in the war-

ravaged country, causing rising alarm in neighboring Israel, its bitter foe, and

garnering the attention of Washington.

Iran has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to buttress Syria’s economy,

oversees a multinational Shiite militia force to bolster Mr. Assad’s flagging army,

and trains Syrian militia networks based on Iran's Basij paramilitary volunteer

force.

But Iran’s success and expanding reach into Syria, which serves as Tehran’s vital geopolitical link to its client Hezbollah in Lebanon, has made Syria potentially a

key arena if the US wants to undermine Iran’s regional stance, analysts say.

As a consequence, President Trump’s administration has signaled an intention to

roll back the Islamic Republic’s influence, not only in Syria but elsewhere in the

region.

“The best strategy to roll back Iranian influence is to weaken it in Syria by

denying it the resources it has invested in through the Assad regime,” Randa

Slim, a scholar with the Washington-based Middle East Institute and an expert on Hezbollah, says without elaborating. “Syria anchors the Iran-Syria-Iraq-Hezbollah

axis. Denying Iran that anchor will roll back its influence not only in Lebanon and weaken Hezbollah but in the whole region.”

In Moscow last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told President

Vladimir Putin there could be no peace in Syria as long as Iranian forces remained there.

“Iran is arming itself and its forces against Israel, including from Syria territory,

and is, in fact, gaining a foothold to continue the fight against Israel,” he said

following his meeting with Mr. Putin.

Plans for a naval base.

Iran seems to have no intention of abandoning Syria. In November, Gen.

Mohammad Hossein Baqari, the chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, said the Islamic Republic could in the future establish naval bases in Yemen and Syria.

Iran is providing some military support to Houthi militiamen, who with their

Yemeni allies have been battling a Saudi-led military coalition since March 2015.

Mr. Netanyahu raised the Iranian naval base proposal during his meeting with

Putin. Moscow’s immediate response to Netanyahu’s concerns is so far unclear,

but many analysts doubt that Russia will – or can – apply pressure on its Iranian battlefield ally to reverse its agenda in Syria.

Although Assad and his Russian, Iranian, and Lebanese allies have gained the

upper hand in the conflict, the war is far from over. Given the chronic manpower shortage facing the Syrian Army, Assad and his partners continue to need each

other to prevail, a reality that weighs against an unraveling of the alliance for

now.

"The possibility of working with Russia in an attempt to minimize Iranian

influence is being examined,” says Frederic C. Hof, the director of the Rafik

Hariri Center for the Middle East at the Atlantic Council in Washington. "As of

now there is no evidence of Moscow's willingness to do so and no evidence that

it has the leverage to restrain Assad or Iranian-led militias.

“Russians are telling members of the Syrian opposition that they are fed up with

the unprofessionalism of Assad's army and the Shiite militiamen brought in by

Iran from Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan," Mr. Hof continues. "But it's not clear

what Moscow would be willing and able to do about it."

Israel’s diplomatic attempts to block an Iranian naval presence in Syria may have

come too late. On Monday, Russia’s Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily reported that

Assad has already green lighted the establishment of an Iranian naval base,

which is to be located on the coast close to Jableh and the Hmeimim air base,

which is currently being used by the Russian Air Force.

If the report is confirmed, a naval base in Syria potentially grants Iran a

maritime route to transfer armaments to Hezbollah in Lebanon in addition to the

long-established air route via Damascus airport. It could also create friction in

the waters of the Mediterranean, which is patrolled by the Israel Navy and the US Navy’s Sixth Fleet.

Building up the Golan front

The other area of interest for Iran in Syria is the Golan Heights, the volcanic

plateau in southwestern Syria that overlooks northern Israel. Much of it was

seized by Israeli troops in the 1967 war and has since remained under Israeli

occupation. Hezbollah fighters and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)

personnel have had a presence on the northern Golan since at least late 2013.

According to sources close to Hezbollah, the Lebanese group in 2014 installed

some military infrastructure in the area north of Quneitra, including bunkers and

firing positions, with the goal of extending the front with Israel from south

Lebanon into the Golan. In January 2015, an IRGC general and six Hezbollah

members, including two senior officers, were killed in an Israeli drone strike near Quneitra. The team had been inspecting the newly-installed facilities when they

were attacked, say sources close to Hezbollah.

Between 100 and 150 Hezbollah fighters are deployed in the northern end of the

plateau, and an unknown number of IRGC personnel are suspected to be with them, say Western security sources familiar with the dynamics on the Golan. Currently, they and other government forces are in a standoff with anti-Assad rebels in the area.

However, the Assad regime is negotiating a series of cease-fire agreements with communities in the northern Golan in which rebels are allowed to move to the

Idlib province in the north in exchange for the resumption of state control in the

vacated villages.

If the process continues to be successful, the northern Golan may become

neutralized from the Syria conflict, which could allow Iran and Hezbollah to

revive its original plans for the area. In a possible signal of Iran’s future

intentions, the Hezbollah al-Nujaba Movement, an Iran-backed Iraqi Shiite

militia, announced last week that it was establishing a new unit called the Golan Liberation Front.

“This is a trained army with specific plans,” said Sayyed Hashem Moussawi, the

leader of the group, in a press conference announcing the new group. “If the government of Syria requests, we and our allies are ready to take action to

liberate the Golan.”

Since the last war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006, the border between

Lebanon and Israel has remained mostly calm, with both sides wary of triggering another, more devastating, conflict. But, says Giora Eiland, a former Israeli

national security adviser and retired general, unlike Lebanon, where Israel can

hold the Lebanese government accountable for Hezbollah actions from its

territory, the Syrian government has limited control over its land.

"Syria is far from a state that can be accountable, and if Hezbollah manages to

create positions on the Israeli-Syrian border and act against Israel from Syria, it

would be very hard to deter the Syrian government,” he says.

3a) President Trump, North Korea, and

Israel's Nuclear Strategy

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Although concerns about a Trump confrontation with a

nuclear North Korea are widespread, there has been little corollary discussion of crisis implications for other parts of the world. Yet there are important spillover implications to

be considered, specifically with reference to the Middle East and Israel's nuclear strategy.

It appears increasingly plausible that President Donald Trump's first major test in strategic crisis management will come from North Korea. The spillover effects of any such test, a complex

challenge that may or may not have a nuclear dimension, could rapidly involve other countries,

including several powerful states in the Middle East.

Context is vital. All world politics ultimately comprise a single integrated system of states. What happens in any one geographic area, therefore, can quickly affect another.

Israel is a case in point. As a beleaguered state possessing a prospective (and still intentionally

opaque) nuclear “equalizer,” Israel is no doubt well aware that the use of nuclear weapons

anywhere in the world would immediately erase the longstanding nuclear taboo. A prima facie

erasure of this sort could increase the odds of subsequent nuclear firings in Israel's own volatile neighborhood.

Furthermore, as North Korea already has a documented nuclear assistance history with Syria

and Iran (the Syrian nuclear threat was eliminated by Israel's preemptive Operation Orchard on September 6, 2007), Jerusalem's concerns over escalations by Pyongyang would be entirely

reasonable. Over time, for example, Iran, with or without any additional direct nuclear

assistance from North Korea, could be encouraged to render itself less vulnerable to an Israeli

hard-target preemption or Israeli cyber-deterrence. The extent of any such encouragement

would depend, at least in part, on Pyongyang's prior success or failure in navigating “escalation dominance” with the Trump-led US.

For now, Israel's nuclear strategy remains deliberately ambiguous. The so-called “bomb-in-the-basement” posture has endured since the 1960s, primarily because Jerusalem has not yet had to

worry about confronting any enemy state's nuclear forces. This once reasonable position would

need to change, however, if Iran were perceived by Israel to have become nearly nuclear. Israel's strategic posture would need to change even more urgently if Jerusalem should find itself facing a nuclear fait accompli in Tehran.

For Israel, however, it's not just about Iran. For entirely sound reasons, the Jewish State could

at some point decide to shift to a more credible and persuasive measure of nuclear disclosure

once an actual nuclear attack had taken place anywhere on earth. In essence, there would not

need to be any direct connection between such an attack and Israel for Jerusalem to

acknowledge new national survival obligations.

For example, any belligerent use of nuclear weapons by North Korea might lower Pakistani

cost-benefit calculations of a nuclear war with India. While not directed in any way towards

Israel, such a destabilizing development in an already nuclear and coup-vulnerable Islamic state would naturally raise red flags in Jerusalem.

For Israel, a key question is this: What scenarios should be considered once Pyongyang has

actually fired nuclear weapons at another state (e.g., Japan, or American military targets) or configuration of states (e.g., South Korea, Japan, and/or the in-range US)? The precise manner

and extent to which Israel could be affected in any such taboo-breaking circumstances would

depend, inter alia, on prevailing geopolitical alignments and cleavages, both regional and

worldwide.

More precisely, the expected impact on Israel would lie in the particular way President Trump

had handled the nuclear crisis with North Korea. In this regard, all players in both Washington

and Jerusalem need to remember that there is no scientific way of ascertaining risk in

unprecedented circumstances. That is because in any valid scientific calculation, probabilities

must be based upon the discoverable frequency of pertinent past events.

Leaving aside the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, which may or may not represent an apt analogue

here, there simply are no pertinent past events.

Inevitably, the potential spillover effect on Israel of any nuclear weapons use by North Korea

would depend, in part, upon the combatants involved; the expected rationality or irrationality of

those combatants; the yield and range of the weapons fired; and of course, the aggregate

calculation of civilian and military harm suffered in the affected areas. If, for example,

Pyongyang fired nuclear weapons against American targets, military and/or civilian, Jerusalem

could reasonably anticipate an overwhelmingly destructive US response. That said, the extent of

the American response would depend a great deal on the inherently uncertain “Trump Factor.”

It follows that Israel's senior strategic planners should already be preparing their best estimates

of this eccentric factor – although again, there can be no scientifically meaningful basis for any

such calculations.

For Israel, further complications could affect its decision-making. Israeli planners would have

to account not only for singular nuclear weapons operations launched by North Korea, but also

for any interactions or synergies that might then be expected. Because world politics is not

geometry, the Israelis would need to take into consideration that the whole of inflicted harm can

be substantially greater than the sum of attack “parts.”

How should Israeli strategic planners cope with such bewildering insights, complications, and expectations? First, they will need to factor into the evolving corpus of national nuclear policy preparation an updated version of Carl von Clausewitz's classic “friction.” According to this

nuanced conceptual consideration, Israeli analysts will have to base their enhanced adjustments

of the country’s nuclear doctrine on a widely integrated range of potentially critical factors.

This range should involve a calculated loosening of “deliberate ambiguity,” including a

recognizable Israeli capacity to deny expected enemy nuclear attack objectives with advanced

anti-missile defenses.

Among other refinements, Jerusalem will need to assess whether or not the new American

president is able to maintain complete rationality during any anticipated process of crisis

escalation, and whether he can grasp certain plausible expected benefits of “pretend

irrationality.” In this connection, Israeli leaders will want to recall Moshe Dayan's advice. Said

the Israeli Minister of Defense many years back, “Israel must be seen as a mad dog, too

dangerous to bother.”

When contemplating a nuclear crisis between Washington and Pyongyang, Jerusalem must bear

in mind that several intersecting and overwhelmingly destructive consequences could extend to

other countries, including Israel. To prepare for such a threat, Israel's strategic planners should

be gaming various scenarios in which President Trump (1) hews closely to fully rationa

l “plays;” and (2) adheres to other moves in which he might (however unwittingly) act upon

Dayan's apt metaphor of feigned madness. In the latter case, Israeli analysts should examine

Trump's expected crisis decision-making together with a pretended irrationality option.

Strategic planners should be warned. A “mad dog” strategy might work for the US and Israel,

but it could also backfire against both countries with potentially egregious human costs. In the

case of Israel, which is half the size of America's Lake Michigan, these costs could prove

existential.

Louis René Beres is Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue and the author of

twelve books and several hundred articles on nuclear strategy and nuclear war. His newest

book is Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel's Nuclear Strategy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016).

3b)Those commuters crammed into the underground system are

the lucky ones — initially, at least. When the missile hits, they are protected from the blinding light of the 20-kiloton detonation.

From The Daily Mail

But above ground, in the area centred on the Yeouido financial district, all is destruction. Buildings up to a mile from Ground Zero have been vaporised or reduced to rubble. Some 70,000 people are dead, killed by the heat and the

blast wave. Many more will succumb to radiation burns and radioactive fall-out over coming days.

The nuclear nightmare that has long bedevilled South Korea — America’s key ally in the region and one of the world’s most dynamic economies — has become reality.

North Korea, most rogue of rogue nations, has struck. The nuclear explosion, similar in size to that which leveled Hiroshima, signaled the start of a blitzkrieg-style ground invasion intended to swiftly overwhelm its richer, more advanced neighbour.

A second atomic warhead, inbound on a crude Rodong rocket, has been successfully intercepted by America’s THAAD (Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence) anti-ballistic missile system. But Seoul’s torment is only beginning as hundreds of North Korean heavy guns rain down shells on the capital, many containing Sarin nerve gas.

The city, bunched up against the North-South border, is hopelessly vulnerable to a mass sneak attack of the kind now taking place, as hundreds of thousands of North Korean troops, and thousands of tanks, pour out of innumerable underground bunkers built within miles of the Demilitarized Zone between the two countries.

The rest of the world watches as the horror is relayed via 24- hour rolling news and on social media. And waits for the next move …

Could such a scenario ever come to pass? Will Kim Jong-un, latest incarnation of the cult dynasty that has ruled the Communist northern half of Korea since 1948, exchange bluff for action and, one day, deploy his small but lethal nuclear arsenal?

That terrifying possibility moved a step nearer this month when, without warning, Kim Jong-un ordered a salvo of missiles to be fired towards his other nervous neighbour, Japan.

The latest in a series of escalating acts of provocation by the North Korean dictator this year saw three (non-nuclear) missiles land in Japanese waters. North Korean media,which released photographs of the launch ‘supervised’ by a delighted Kim Jong-un, said the missiles had been aimed

at American bases in Japan.

International condemnation was swift and wide-ranging, with the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, describing the launch as a ‘new level’ of threat. The U.S. appears to be losing patience.

On Tuesday, it ratchetted-up the pressure further with the deployment to Korean waters of the super-carrier USS Carl Vinson. The 100,000-ton Nimitz-class carrier, with 40-plus F-18 fighters on board, and a powerful escort of cruisers and destroyers, is the ultimate ‘big stick’ expression of American power — and a provocation to paranoid minds in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.

Sources in South Korea are claiming the heightened military presence — which includes moving in ‘Grey Eagle’ attack drones — is part of a U.S. plan to ‘decapitate’ North Korean leadership and demolish key military facilities.

Ostensibly, The Vinson is there to take part in the annual U.S.-South Korean joint military exercises — code named ‘Foal Eagle’ and ‘Key Resolve’ — involving 300,000 South Korean personnel and 20,000 Americans.

This act of allied solidarity was met, as usual, with blood-curdling threats from Pyongyang. It warned of ‘merciless ultra-precision strikes from ground, air, sea and underwater’ in retaliation.

As the Vinson berthed in the South Korean port of Busan, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, on a tour of the region, warned that the ‘diplomatic and other efforts of the past 20 years to bring North Korea to a point of de-nuclearisation have failed’.

The United States, said Tillerson, had provided $1.35 billion in assistance to Pyongyang to encourage it to abandon its nuclear programme, but to no effect. A ‘new approach’ was required — but what that might be, he refused to say.

President Donald Trump has stated that ‘every option was on the table’ when it comes to North Korean aggression. While the phrase was meant to reassure, many Japanese, and South Koreans worry that the Americans are contemplating pre-emptive strikes on North Korean military sites — which would indeed place them in the crosshairs of retaliatory attacks.

In unusually graphic language, China, North Korea’s reluctant patron, has warned that the communist state and the U.S. are like ‘two accelerating trains’ speeding towards a head-on crash. The rhetoric may not be misplaced.

If World War III is to break out anywhere, then it will probably be in this febrile region. North Korea is intent on developing nuclear-tipped missiles that can hit the States. Large areas of Japan and all of South Korea are already in range. Its nuclear arsenal numbers some 20 Hiroshima-size atomic bombs.

What is not clear is if North Korea has the ability to marry these A-bombs to its missiles to create workable devices

But even the most cautious of analysts warns it is only a matter of time.

Kim Jong-un, irrational and unpredictable at the best of times, appears increasingly trigger-happy, reveling in his ability to make Western powers squirm. In February, North Korea launched an intermediate-range ballistic missile, superior to anything that had gone before.

Just days later came the brazen murder, by a hit squad using powerful VX nerve toxin of Kim Jong-un’s estranged half-brother, Kim Jong-nam. The manner of the killing, at Kuala Lumpur airport in Malaysia, was intended to strike terror into the hearts of exiled opponents of the Kim regime. (Yesterday, Interpol issued warrants for the arrest of four North Koreans in connection with the murder.)

It is, however, the test-firing of four ballistic missiles towards Japan on March 5 (a fifth is thought to have failed) that most concerns the West.

++++++++++++++++++++++

4)More than Just Another Anti-Israel U.N. Farce

A new United Nations report libels Israel, promotes hatred, and makes peace even less likely.

By Jonathan S. Tobin

It isn’t easy to get worked up at the United Nations, an institution where the egregious is merely

business as usual. But even veteran observers of the world body had to sit up and take notice when

its Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia published a report about Israel that Secretary General Antonio Gutteres himself immediately disavowed. The lengthy document purported to prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the state of Israel was guilty of “the crime of apartheid” according to

international law. As such, it didn’t merely criticize Israel’s policies in the West Bank; it called into

question the legitimacy of the Jewish state itself, even with pre-1967 borders.

The immediate reaction to this piece of libel from both the head of the U.N. and the U.S. government was quick and appropriate. Through his spokesman, Gutteres said he was not consulted by the report’s

authors and its contents did not reflect his views. Nikki Haley, the American ambassador to the U.N.

said that the United States was “outraged’ by the report and demanded that the secretariat officially

withdraw it.

Gutteres agrees, and today said the report should be withdrawn from the U.N. website where it was published. But whether or not it is pulled from that site, the damage is already done. The report is a

pseudo-scholarly compendium of specious charges, distortions, and outright lies. Even for an

institution in which agencies devoted to human rights are run by representatives of Saudi Arabia and

Iran — an institution that has made grossly unfair accusations against Israel something of a sport

over the years — this one stands out, because it goes beyond merely smearing the Jewish state

offering legal justification for future attacks against Israel and Jews. Never before has the U.N.

officially tied Israel to apartheid. At a time when, despite the efforts of the Trump administration to

revive talks, Middle East peace seems more unlikely than ever, the report’s findings will make it even

harder to persuade the Palestinians to compromise and finally accept the necessity of giving up its

war on the Jewish state. And by putting the U.N. seal of approval on the “apartheid” libel, the report

will provide aid and comfort to those whose anti-Zionist incitement provides a thin veil of legitimacy f

or the growth of anti-Semitism across the globe.

The report is the work of two Americans, Princeton Law professor emeritus Richard Falk and

Virginia Tilley of the University of Southern Illinois. As a 9/11 truther and an anti-Israel extremist, Falk is particularly unqualified to evaluate the conflict. Yet together with Tilley, he has put together a

document that lists Palestinian grievances while ignoring those of Israel in a complex conflict where

both sides have suffered. And that’s not all: Rather than merely claim that Israel must evacuate the

territories it won in a defensive war in 1967, as most of its critics assert, their report goes straight to

the heart of the matter by using Israel’s very existence as a Jewish state to justify the apartheid charge.

By arguing in this way, it dismisses the obvious differences between what happened in South Africa

— where a tiny white majority denied all rights to the black majority — and Israel, a Jewish-majority

country where the Arab minority has full rights, including suffrage, representation, and equality under

the law. It similarly considers irrelevant the fact that the standoff over the disputed territory of the

West Bank is the result of Palestinian unwillingness to recognize Israel’s right to exist within any

borders, stubbornly maintained through repeated refusals of peace offers that would have created a Palestinian state. And by denying legitimacy to Israel’s basis for existence as the one Jewish state

on the planet, surrounded by multiple nations that are explicitly Muslim or Arab, it implicitly

legitimizes the century-long war that has been waged against the Zionist effort, positing that Jews

may be legally denied rights granted to others as a matter of course.

The report comes at a particularly inopportune time for those hoping President Trump’s surprising

interest in reviving peace talks might bear fruit. The Palestinians rejected President Obama’s efforts

to tilt the diplomatic playing field in their direction. They torpedoed the negotiations sponsored by

Secretary of State John Kerry, embracing efforts to get the U.N. to grant them statehood without first

requiring them to make peace with Israel. Their unwillingness to make compromises will only be

strengthened by a report that encourages them to regard Israel as having no rights whatsoever. They are likely to make Falk’s and Tilley’s findings the basis for renewed efforts to sue Israel in the

International Criminal Court, as well as for renewed provocations in other U.N. bodies such as the

Human Rights Council or even UNESCO, which in the past year has taken up measures that denied

the historical Jewish ties to Jerusalem and some of Judaism’s holiest sites.

Just as unfortunate is the way the report will be used to buttress the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement against Israel, which is one of the primary engines of anti-Semitic incitement

both in Europe and the United States. While BDS claims to be merely a protest against Israel,

wherever its banner is raised, anti-Jewish hate speech and actions soon follow. Those who

subscribe to the notion that the Jewish state has no rights that need be respected are not merely

promoting bias on the international stage, but also are part of an effort that leads inexorably to anti-

Semitic hate speech.

Liberal groups have labeled President Trump as the main source of encouragement for the uptick in

anti-Jewish incidents in the United States. This is due in part to his inflammatory statements during

the election campaign, the support he received from anti-Semites in the small but loud alt-right and

far-right elements of his base, and his refusal to quickly disavow such hate once he became

president. Partisans have overstated this argument while failing to take into account Trump’s close

Jewish ties, his support for Israel, and the things most of those actively promoting anti-Semitism

actually care about. The U.N. report is a reminder that in our time, the singling out of Jews for

discriminatory treatment is primarily driven by anti-Israel propaganda, which serves as a thin veil for

a new and insidious form of anti-Semitism. Those looking for the reason behind the rising tide of

hate against Jews around the globe would do better to read Falk and Tilley than to read Trump’s

tweets.

— Jonathan S. Tobin is the opinion editor at JNS.org and a contributing writer for National Review

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Middle East and Other Musings

Thursday, March 16, 2017

Andy Falk - What Happened? Is Ryan and His Party Busily Engaged in Killing The Golden Opportunity Goose. Kim Thinks Not.

Paul Ryan’s Political Blind Spot

By pushing through an Obamacare replacement that has little support with the public or his caucus, he’s risking a major political backlash against the GOP.

If they blow health-care reform, why would anyone vote Republican again?

The health-care bill is far from dead, and a contentious debate is a sign of vigor.

Israel's Nuclear Strategy

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