On What Basis Did Palestinians Become Entitled To A Nation Status? SOTUS And More.

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

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

Since when did the Palestinians become entitled to a state?

By Ted Belman 

In 2011, Newt Gingrich said “The Palestinians are an invented people.” He was right. So why are they entitled to a state?

In 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organization was formed to liberate Palestine through armed struggle. But it took years for the notion of a Palestinian people to crystalize.  In 1967, they were not recognized as such, nor were they considered a party to the conflict.  Security Council Resolution 242 passed after the ’67 war, made no mention of them.

But in 1969, the State Department tabled the Rogers Plan:. It provided: “We believe its just settlement must take into account the desires and aspirations of the refugees and the legitimate concerns of the Governments in the area.” whereas Res 242 simply required a “just settlement of the refugee issue”. It also stressed the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war” as set out in the recital ignoring the fact that recitals do not create obligations.

In 1978, when the peace treaty with Egypt was being finalized, Pres Carter pushed PM Begin to agree to create a Palestinian state in five years. Begin refused but did agree to give them autonomy only.

Pres Reagan, who followed Carter, continued the pressure on Israel to create a Palestinian state.  Jewish Virtual Library reports on the Reagan Plan (1982):

“Unknown to Israel, the Reagan administration was preparing a new diplomatic initiative for the Middle East, designed to renew the peace process, deal with the Palestinian issue, improve Israel-Egypt relations and provide impetus for Jordan to join the peace process. It was also aimed at pleasing those Arab states who had accepted PLO . evacuees from Beirut and signaling them that the U.S. was not satisfied solely with their departure from Beirut, but was seeking an overall solution.”

When PM Begin finally heard of the plan he said, “It is the saddest day of my life”.

The Reagan plan called for direct negotiations, an interim period of self-government and then ultimately an alliance with Jordan rather than a Palestinian State. He also called for an immediate freeze on settlement construction and for an undivided Jerusalem, the fate for which to be decided by negotiations.

The US as a matter of policy, promoted the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people and forced Israel to accept them in peace discussions at the Madrid Conference in 1991.

Israel wanted to deal only with the Arabs in the territories but the US kept insisting that the PLO be involved because she wanted a voice for the Arab refugees outside of the territories. This pressure led Israel to come forward with her own Plan namely the Oslo Accords.  She wanted it to apply only to the local Arabs but Pres Clinton insisted that the PLO be involved and that Israel accept back 40,000 of their terrorists and their leadership who has been rescued from Beirut by Reagan and deposited in Tunisia for safe keeping.

In 1993, Israel signed, along with them, the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements (Oslo I) and in 1995 the Interim Agreement on the West Bank (Oslo II), but these Accords made no mention of giving them a state.

Surprisingly, President George W. Bush gave it an official nod for the first time in his vision speech of 2002. This speech came about in response to enormous pressure from Saudi Arabia which was demanding the creation of such a state. Even so, it was conditioned on the Palestinians fighting terror, not aiding it or abetting it. In fact, there were many other pre-conditions to the creation of the state.  But the US and the world quickly forgot about the preconditions and went forward with the idea that the Palestinians were entitled to a state.

Then in 2004, Bush gave a very important letter of assurances to PM Sharon in order to support his plans for disengagement.

“The United States will do its utmost to prevent any attempt by anyone to impose any other plan. Under the roadmap, Palestinians must undertake an immediate cessation of armed activity and all acts of violence against Israelis anywhere, and all official Palestinian institutions must end incitement against Israel. The Palestinian leadership must act decisively against terror, including sustained, targeted, and effective operations to stop terrorism and dismantle terrorist capabilities and infrastructure. Palestinians must undertake a comprehensive and fundamental political reform that includes a strong parliamentary democracy and an empowered prime minister.

“Second, there will be no security for Israelis or Palestinians until they and all states, in the region and beyond, join together to fight terrorism and dismantle terrorist organizations. The United States reiterates its steadfast commitment to Israel’s security, including secure, defensible borders, and to preserve and strengthen Israel’s capability to deter and defend itself, by itself, against any threat or possible combination of threats.[..]

“As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance with UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338.”

In this letter, which amounted to a contract, Bush committed the US to prevent any other plan being imposed.  He also committed the US to Israel’s security and reiterated Israel’s right to defensible borders. By affirming Res 242, he was affirming that Israel need not vacate 100% of the land. The Arabs were livid.

Within a couple of months of his inauguration in 2009, Pres Obama repudiated this contract. In response to this and other indicators, I wrote that Obama intended to impose a solution on Israel in 2009. I explained that he had to repudiate it because the contract, if allowed to stand, committed the US to oppose the imposition of any other plan.

Obama then forced Netanyahu to recognize a Palestinian right to a state in his Bar Ilan Speech in June 2009 in which Netanyahu said:

“In my vision of peace, in this small land of ours, two peoples live freely, side-by-side, in amity and mutual respect. Each will have its own flag, its own national anthem, its own government. Neither will threaten the security or survival of the other.”

He went on to stipulate two demands or preconditions: namely the new state must be demilitarized and must recognize Israel as the State of the Jewish people. This was the first time Netanyahu or his party embraced the two state solution. Obama was satisfied even with all the pre-conditions and stipulations. He got what he wanted. He would ignore the stipulations. And this resolution does just that.

Next, he backed the Arab Peace Initiative, which called for 100% withdrawal, contrary to Res 242, albeit with mutually agreed swaps.

Then he demanded a complete building freeze, even in Jerusalem. Even so he could not get any concessions from either the Arab League or from the PA as compensation. Having no other choice, he backed the PA’s demand that, as the price of the PA entering negotiations, Israel should release over 100 Arab prisoners with blood on their hands. Israel agreed, though no one had any expectations that the PA would compromise. This prisoner release was in effect another freebie for them.

After strenuous efforts to achieve an agreement, Obama backed off but demanded that there be a continued freeze and nothing be done to make untenable the two-state solution.

But he hadn’t given up. By engineering the passage of Security Council Resolution 2334 declaring “the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity” and demanding 100% withdrawal, he, in effect, was getting the Security Council to back his parameters for a peace agreement, namely ’67 lines plus swaps, with a divided Jerusalem.

This, in other words, is a demand by the international community that all lands east of the ’67 lines be free of Jews (judenrein, as the Nazis used to put it).  That would include the Jewish neighborhoods in the eastern part of Jerusalem.  Thus, the lands east of the ’67 lines must be ethnically cleansed of the 900,000 Jews that live there. A majority of which Jews were born there.

The Security Council underlined  “that it will not recognize any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations….”  Thus the Jews were denied the Temple Mount, the Old City, including the Jewish Quarter, the Holy Basin and the Western Wall, otherwise known as the Kotel.

This resolution completely overturned Res 242, which was passed 50 years ago and which was the cornerstone of all subsequent initiatives like the Oslo Accords, the Roadmap and the Bush letter of ’04. Throughout this entire period, all US presidents stressed the need for direct negotiations to settle all disputes. Any concessions that Israel made along the way were conditioned on the basis of direct negotiations to come.

This resolution removed from such negotiations, the ultimate borders, the fate of the settlements, the requirement that the borders be defensible and whether to create a state.

In the Oslo Accords, Israel made major concessions to the Palestine Liberation Organization representing the Arabs by inviting them into the territories and granting them autonomy in Areas A and B as demarcated by the Accords, believing that all Israeli safeguards in the Accords would protect her. Keep in mind that the Accords did not promise the Arabs a state nor did they proscribe settlement activity.

Prior to signing these Accords, Israel insisted that the PLO accept Res 242 as binding. This was important to Israel because it stipulated that Israel need only withdraw to “recognized and secure boundaries”. This new resolution negates all Israeli safeguards but not the concessions made by Israel. To do so is unconscionable.

On the one hand, the UN continually accuses Israel of violating international law and declares the settlements illegal by international law; yet, on the other hand, it ignores salient facts and binding contracts. The resolution thus violates the international legal order itself. The UN should be governed by law not by caprice.

Another example of invoking a law that doesn’t exist is the clause which cites “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force”.  Howard Adelman makes short shrift of this proposition. There is no such law.

This resolution is built upon the proposition that the settlements are illegal by international law. But what if they aren’t?  The UN holds that the lands in question are subject to the Fourth Geneva Convention, which applies whenever a High Contracting Party (HCP)  i.e., a country which signed the convention, belligerently occupies the land of another HCP. But in this case the lands in question were not the land of a HCP but were unallocated land under the Palestine Mandate.

PM Netanyahu appointed a commission consisting of one retired High Court Judge and two senior lawyers to study the matter. In 2014, it issued the Levy Report, which concluded that the FGC does not apply. But even if it does apply, it doesn’t prevent Jews from voluntarily settling on the lands. And keep in mind that the Palestine Mandate gave Jews the right of close settlement on these lands, which right has never been terminated, nor can it be.

This matter has never been determined by a court of competent jurisdiction and thus the UN has no right to treat it as settled law.

To use the vernacular, Israel is being railroaded into creating a Palestinian state on all the territories captured 50 years ago, contrary to law, the facts, and existing agreements. Everything is twisted to label Israel a violator of law, when in fact it is the UN that is the violator. All this on behalf of an invented people who didn’t exist 50 years ago.

And:

Debunking the Arab Narrative

By Ted Belman

The high mark of the rights of the Jews to Palestine, formerly known as Judea for 1,000 years, was not the 1917 Balfour Declaration, it was just a declaration, but the San Remo Resolution of 1920.

In my article, Jordan is Palestine – A Legal Analysis, I wrote:

The San Remo Resolution is the subject of research of international law scholar and lawyer, Jacques Gauthier, Ph.D.  Gauthier, who is Christian, spent a quarter-century researching and writing a 1,300-page thesis to investigate legal ownership rights of Jerusalem, the ancient-modern capital city.

Through San Remo, a legal document,  Gauthier explained. “The Jewish people have been given the right to establish a home, based on the recognition of their historical connection and the grounds for reconstituting this national home,”.

The Palestine Mandate, passed in 1922 by the League of nations, included this recital.  “Whereas recognition has thereby [i.e. by the Treaty of Sèvres] been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine, and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country”

I buttressed Gauthier’s opinion in Israel is the legal owner of all lands west of the Jordan R.

That’s it. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Thus, to establish the basis for the Arab claim to the land, they claim to be the indigenous people. But are they?

The Palestinian “Indigenous Population” Argument – Myths and Facts by Danny the Digger,

Perhaps the most powerful argument of the Palestinian-Arabs in the conflict over the land is that they are a “native” or “indigenous population,” while the Jewish-Zionists are a foreign population, who colonized their land.

In line with their claim of having been a ‘native population’, in the past the Arab Palestinians claimed to be descendants of the Philistines. But are they? For one thing the Philistines themselves were immigrants from Greece. They spoke a dialect of Greek and worshipped Philistine and Canaanite gods. Moreover, in western cultures, the Philistines are perceived as barbarians.

Realizing this, in recent years the Arab Palestinians changed their claim, and argue to be descendants of the Canaanites. However, the Canaanites also did not speak Arabic nor did they worship Allah. They spoke a Canaanite, which is close to Hebrew, and worshipped a pantheon of Gods.

According to the United Nations,

Indigenous peoples are the holders of unique languages, knowledge systems and beliefs and possess invaluable knowledge of practices for the sustainable management of natural resources. They have a special relation to and use of their traditional land. Their ancestral land has a fundamental importance for their collective physical and cultural survival as peoples. Indigenous peoples hold their own diverse concepts of development, based on their traditional values, visions, needs and priorities.

Back to Danny the Digger:

The cultural roots of Arab Palestinians, most of which are Muslims, are in the Arabian Peninsula. It is the source both of their language, and their religion. They originate in the Arabian Peninsula, and that is the only place where they can claim to be an ‘Indigenous population’.

 But the Jews fit this definition exactly.

In fact, the Palestine Mandate also recognized “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine”

But what about their claim that the Jews are “occupiers” of Arab land? Such a claim is false on two accounts. It’s not “Arab land” and Jews are not in any way “occupiers”. It’s a myth.

How to defeat the Israel ‘occupation’ myth with facts

First, just because a preponderance of countries in the United Nations vote to condemn Israel’s “occupation” doesn’t make it illegal..

Second, citing the Fourth Geneva Convention (FGC) to prove Israel illegally “occupies” Judea and Samaria exposes equally serious flaws in the anti-Zionist argument.

But the FGC is not applicable here because the FGC only applies when a country takes over the sovereign territory of another country (Art 2). The land in question was never the land of another country. Jordan, nor any other country, ever had recognized sovereignty there.

The facts are otherwise. Jews have lived in the land continuously for at least 3000 years. The San Remo Resolution in 1920, gave the Jewish people legal title to the land and the Palestine Mandate of 1922 gave them the right to settle the land.

After the ’67 War, the United Nations Security Council passed Res 242.  It made no mention of the Palestinian people, because there was no such people.

Affirms that the fulfilment of Charter principles requires the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East which should include the application of both the following principles:

i) “Withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;(ii) Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;

Thus the Security Council; gave Israel the right to stay in possession of “territories occupied in the recent conflict” until she had a peace agreement with all states in the area which provided for “secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force”.  It did not require Israel to withdraw from “all territories” and allowed Israel to keep some of the land which it required for security.  So far, no such agreement has been attained but Israel has already withdrawn from 91% of the territories.

Israel considers the Jordan River to be its secure boundary and will not withdraw from it.

Yet, since 1999, the UN, EU and the PA refer to the remaining land as “occupied Palestinian territory”. This was due to the fact that the Oslo Accords gave the Palestinians autonomy over Area A, partial autonomy over Area B and no autonomy over Area C as delineated by the Accords. But even they recognize that these lands are not sovereign Palestinian territory.

The preamble to the Accords provides;

“Recognizing that the aim of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations [..], leading to a permanent settlement based on Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338;

Reaffirming [..] that the negotiations on the permanent status, [..] will lead to the implementation of Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338,[,,]”

This is the bottom line. Res 242 rules, and the Oslo Accords is nothing more than a path to it.

And as I pointed out in “Israel should terminate the Oslo Accords”, such autonomy can be cancelled by Israel at any time.

In conclusion, these lands are not Palestinian lands and they are not illegally occupied by Israel.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 

Has China begun hording food? Know I sound crazy but would not be surprised if China decided to try another Pearl Harbour. We have weak presidential leadership, screwed up Pentagon leadership, a divided nation that believes socialism preferable to freedom, debt load that is crippling and weapon and energy supply that has been depleted because of what we shipped to Ukraine. 

Finally Iran could co-ordinate an attack with China.

Some times thinking outside the box prevents you from getting yourself boxed in.

+++ 

And:

Iran reveals existence of underground military airbase

Base will house fighter planes equipped with long-range cruise missiles.

 

Iran has revealed the existence of a new underground airbase, the first of its kind, where fighter planes equipped with long-range cruise missiles are to be housed, deep beneath the earth.

According to the IRNA news agency, the new base, known as Nesher 44, is "one of the most important military air bases" and will play a large role in operational activities.

The location of the base is described as somewhere in the mountains. Building military facilities deep beneath the earth has long been a feature of Iranian policy.

And:

Democracy is truly being challenged in the House of Representatives.

Dozens of members REFUSE to denounce the concept of socialism.

What does this mean for the future of the United States?

Read on.

Regards,

Aaron Edwards

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

Democrats only care about what they shape voters to think.

+++

Does the Democratic Party Care What Its Voters Think?

Insiders fall in line behind the candidate the electorate doesn’t want.

By James Freeman 

One year before the start of the primary election season, it’s hard to recall a president who faced as much resistance to his re-election plans among voters in his own party as Joe Biden does today. All the roughly comparable modern examples suggest that Mr. Biden is in for a very disappointing 2024. Yet for some reason he’s not attracting competition from other Democrats.

“Biden or bust: Democratic insiders are all in for Biden 2024,” says an NBC News headline. Alex Seitz-Wald reports from Philadelphia:

President Joe Biden had one question for Democratic power brokers at a campaign-style rally Friday: “Are you with me?”

The roars of approval and chants of “four more years!” at the Democratic National Committee’s Winter Meeting indicated they were all in for Biden 2024.

Like the new style of music that was about to become wildly popular when Mr. Biden moved out of Scranton, Penn., his next campaign has a classic sound to party insiders. Mr. Seitz-Wald adds:

During the three-day gathering of elected officials, activists, union leaders, operatives and donors this weekend, serious dissent or discontentment with Biden was almost impossible to find, even after hours at the hotel bar, where alcohol and opinions flowed freely.

“If he wants to run, I think everybody will be 100 percent unified behind him. I mean, maybe 99.9999, but we’re the most unified we’ve been in a very long time,” said Jon Bauman, a California DNC member and president of a PAC that promotes Social Security.

“Eventually, the party’s going to have to move to younger people being in more control, and that’s natural, but this doesn’t feel like the moment yet,” said Bauman, better known as “Bowzer” from the 1950s-style rock and roll group Sha Na Na.

But are the insiders listening to the party’s voters? Rank-and-file Democrats have been singing a very different tune. “Biden 2024? Most Democrats say no thank you,” is the headline on an Associated Press story from Josh Boak and Hannah Fingerhut. They report on the latest in a series of polls showing that Democrats want someone other than Biden to lead their party:

A majority of Democrats now think one term is plenty for President Joe Biden, despite his insistence that he plans to seek reelection in 2024.

That’s according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research that shows just 37% of Democrats say they want him to seek a second term, down from 52% in the weeks before last year’s midterm elections . . . 

A majority of Democrats still approve of the job Biden is doing as president, yet their appetite for a reelection campaign has slipped despite his electoral track record.

As one might expect, younger Democrats are especially eager to vote for a non-Biden. But even among Democrats age 45 and older, only 49% now say he should run again, down from 58% in October, according to the AP. Apparently the Bowzer barometer does not yield a perfect reading of voter sentiment.

What does recent presidential history have to say about Mr. Biden’s prospects? Donald Trump had lousy approval ratings generally. But within his own party the “never Trump” Republican was largely a media creation and Mr. Trump ended up cruising to re-nomination before losing the general election in 2020. In the 1992 election season, President George H.W. Bush would face resistance within his own party on his way to a general election defeat. But at this point in his presidency, voters of all parties were rallying around him during the Gulf War.

To find a similar situation of intraparty voter unease a year before primary season, perhaps the closest analogy is another one that won’t give the White House much comfort.

In January 1979 David Broder reported in the Washington Post:

When President Carter was asked last month about what the reporter called “the widening schism in the Democratic Party between yourself and Sen. Kennedy,” he rejected the description out of hand and called the differences between himself and the Massachusetts Democrat “very minor.”

In one respect at least, the president was wrong. Edward M. Kennedy leads Carter in polls of Democratic voters for the party’s 1980 nomination by a margin that no one would call “minor.” The most recent survey, taken by the Los Angeles Times in December, put the margin at 58 to 35 percent nationally in Kennedy’s favor.

By June 1979, the President seemed to be winning over some party insiders, but the voters still didn’t want him. Barry Sussman reported for the Post:

Anything can happen between now and the Democratic presidential nominating convention next summer. Public opinion samplings more than a year before the event obviously are suspect. But, judging from the views of the delegates to the last convention—more than half of whom were interviewed by mail in The Post’s poll—Carter is in far better shape now than the conventional wisdom in Washington would have it.

Instead of losing ground among the former delegates, he appears to have gained slightly or at least held his own among them. In 1976, regardless of whether delegates legally were committed to him, polls showed that about 40 percent of all delegates personally favored Carter as the party’s nominee at the outset of the convention . . . This year, however, 44 percent say they favor Carter as the nominee for 1980 . . . 

In addition to the mail survey of former delegates, The Post interviewed 1,808 adults nationwide by telephone during May. About a third described themselves as registered Democrats. Among that group, only 23 percent said they wanted Carter as the Democratic nominee. Twice as many wanted Kennedy.

Yet President Carter went on to win his party’s nomination in 1980, which should offer some cheer to today’s White House. Also, unlike in 1979 and 1980, today there is no obvious alternative to the incumbent.

Unfortunately for Mr. Carter and his party, in that fall’s general election he went on to lose 44 states.

Speaking of that historic 1980 election, there’s news about the winner. A celebration of Ronald Reagan’s 112th birthday is taking place today at the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif.

Reagan had no trouble running for re-election, either, winning 49 states in 1984. Voters liked what they heard from him. After harsh weather forced his second inauguration indoors at the Capitol in January 1985, he described “the American sound”:

It is hopeful, big-hearted, idealistic, daring, decent, and fair. That’s our heritage, that’s our song. We sing it still.

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

1 - Eleven teens die each day because of texting while driving. Maybe it's time to raise the age of Smart Phone ownership to 21

 

2 - If gun control laws actually worked, Chicago would be Utopia, USA.

 

3 - The Second Amendment makes more women equal than the entire feminist movement.

 

4 - Legal gun owners have 300 million guns and probably a trillion rounds of ammo. Seriously, if we were the problem, you'd know it.

 

5 - When JFK was killed, nobody blamed the rifle. (Unfortunately, nobody blamed the CIA, either!)

 

6 - I have NO problem with vigorous background checks when it comes to firearms. While we're at it - let's do the same when it comes to immigration, Voter I.D., and candidates and running for office (especially candidates running for office).

 

7 - People keep talking about another Civil War. One side knows how to shoot and probably has a trillion rounds. The other side has "safe" crying closets and is confused about which bathroom to use. How do you think that would work out.

 

8- The man who left 300,000 guns for the Taliban is lecturing folks on gun control.

And:

The Pushback Against Gender Ideology Proves Conservatives Can Win The Culture War

By Scott Morefield

+++++++

Ron Klain Leaving As White House Chief of Staff Just As Delusional As Ever

By Rebecca Downs

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

If Omar is allowed to remain in her position that will be a stain on the entire House and a serious and dangerous message to American Jewry.

+++

Ilhan Omar May Survive The GOP’s Purge In The House

(Republicaninformer.com)- Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar may survive the GOP’s attempt to put her committee assignment on the chopping block, according to The Washington Examiner. Since taking a narrow lead in the House, Speaker Kevin McCarthy is pushing to remove the far-left squad member from her seat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

While McCarthy already removed Reps. Eric Swalwell, who had relations with a Chinese spy, and Adam Schiff, it will reportedly be harder to keep Omar off the committee for the antisemitic comments she made in the past.

The House speaker has the ultimate control over choosing members for select committees, including those that are permanent like the Intelligence Committee. However, removing a member from the Foreign Affairs Committee requires a House floor vote and with McCarthy only being able to afford a loss of four votes, he might not have enough Republican support.

Some Republicans believe that McCarthy’s move may be a vengeful blow to Democrats after they stripped Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Paul Gosar (R-AZ) of their committee assignments in 2021. Reps. Victoria Spartz (R-IN) and Nancy Mace (R-SC) have said they would not vote to remove her, and they are reportedly joined by other Republicans who are currently undecided.

“Two wrongs do not make a right. Speaker Pelosi took unprecedented actions last Congress to remove Reps. Greene and Gosar from their committees without proper due process,” Spartz said in a statement, suggesting that McCarthy is guilty of the same thing.

Mace agreed and indicated that she would not support booting Omar because she tries to be “consistent in my values…regardless of who’s in charge.”

Republican Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Chris Smith are reportedly likely to vote with Democrats, who have also been critical of Omar’s criticism of Israel and harmful comments against Jewish people. But the party is still projected to support her bid to keep her assignment.

 

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

Because I have a chronic breathing issue I only left the boat one time and even then had to sit while other's toured.  What I did do is read, read and read.  I actually finished 4 books and have one that I am about 1/3rd through.  I read John Agresto's: "The Deal of Learning," "Start, Stay or Leave,"  by Trey Gowdy, "South To America," by Imani Perry,  "Never Give and Inch," By Mike Pompeo and now on "The Biloxi Boys," by John Gresham, which is always by beach book for the summer months.

Pompeo's book is excellent and I commend it to anyone who wants to see our nation  and Trump through his eye's. His message is mine with different words, ie. "never feed bullies."  He should be re-nominated as Sec. of State should the GOP win in 2024.

I did not hear both  SOTUS nor Sarah Huckabee's rebuttal because a dear cousin, who was near death, has recovered and it was his birthday tonight so we had a zoom for his 02 period. Lynn taped both.

+++

I finally got around to listening to the beginning of SOTUS and after the first few lies I turned it off.  For those who like bias I am posting the NYT's version. 

Here is one version of what I mean by bias and it is the reporter's use of the word "stifle."  Republicans investigating corruption may reveal same but it has nothing to do with the word "stifle. " It is  constitutional obligation of the opposition to investigate corruption.  Biden accuses Republicans of having contempt for the constitution.  Another lie. The speech was as phony as a Biden 3 dollar bill and was not meant to inform but to smear the ears of the less well informed of lies.  It was anything but a healing speech.

As for Sarah Huckabee's rebuttal, I would have much preferred Sen. John Kennedy. His wit and metaphors are far more stinging and penetrating.  The powers that be within the GOP are building Sarah up for the VP slot.

I have attached the Dov Fischer as well as the WSJ Editorial Board's version.

+++

Good morning. Biden’s State of the Union speech benefited from recent good news, but the future is less certain.

By German Lopez

A high point

President Biden used his State of the Union speech to portray the U.S. as a country in recovery, and he is right that there has been a lot of good news lately.

Price increases have slowed. Covid deaths are down about 80 percent compared with a year ago. Ukraine is holding off Russia’s invasion. Congress passed legislation addressing climate change, infrastructure and gun violence, and some of it was bipartisan.

What Biden did not emphasize last night was that the U.S. also faces a lot of uncertainty. Depending on what happens over the next few months, the current moment may end up looking like a temporary high point for the country and Biden’s presidency — or another step toward better times. Today’s newsletter provides a fuller picture of the state of the union, looking at four topics that will shape 2023.

After those four, we will also give you the highlights from Biden’s speech and reactions to it.

Republican House

Biden spent much of his speech celebrating bipartisan accomplishments from the last year, including funding for scientific research, electoral overhaul and same-sex marriage protections. “We’re often told that Democrats and Republicans can’t work together,” Biden said. “But over the past two years, we’ve proved the cynics and naysayers wrong.”

But that bipartisanship was before Republicans took control of the House, and they have been clear that they intend to stifle Biden’s presidency. They have already started investigations into his son’s business dealings and the influx of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The biggest source of uncertainty is the clashes Republicans have promised over spending. Those fights could lead to government shutdowns or, worse, financial calamity if Congress fails to increase the nation’s debt limit.

Inflation

The rate at which prices have been rising — inflation — has now cooled for six straight months.

But inflation is still high. America’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, targets an annual rate of roughly 2 percent, and its preferred inflation measure is still closer to 5 percent.

The labor market also remains very hot, with last week’s jobs report putting the unemployment rate at its lowest level since 1969. A historically low unemployment rate is normally good news. But in an economy with high inflation, a tight labor market can lead to even higher prices. The Federal Reserve could respond by trying to slow the economy further, which could cause a recession.

War in Ukraine

Ukraine has done much better in its fight against Russia than most analysts expected.

But will Ukraine continue to hold out? It is a genuinely open question. Russia has redoubled its efforts, drafting hundreds of thousands of men to the battlefield over the last few months. Vladimir Putin’s forces are planning a renewed offensive in eastern Ukraine, where the fighting has become particularly bloody as Russia tries to take the city of Bakhmut.

Ukraine has defied expectations so far, and could continue doing so. But if Ukraine falls, it would signal to the world that autocrats can get away with invading democratic countries. It would suggest the Western alliance isn’t as powerful as it once was — shifting global power away from democracies like the U.S. and members of the E.U. and toward authoritarian powers like Russia and China. And for Biden, it could damage his standing domestically and globally, much as America’s messy exit from Afghanistan did.

Crime trends

Murders quickly spiked over 2020 and 2021, spawning fears of a new national crime wave. Then good news came in 2022: Murders declined by 5 percent in the country’s largest cities.

But as experts often say, one year does not make a trend. Murder rates are still about 30 percent higher than they were in 2019. Other kinds of crime, including robberies and thefts, increased last year.

The crime data speak to the uncertainty the U.S. faces on all of these topics: The trends are good, but not good enough to fully reverse the problems of recent years.

Biden spent the first half of his speech celebrating economic progress. Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

More from the speech

Biden touted the low unemployment rate and said that bipartisan bills to improve infrastructure and grow high-tech manufacturing would create even more jobs.

Republicans heckled Biden and called him a liar when he said members of their party wanted to end Social Security and Medicare. He argued back, leading to a back-and-forth rarely seen in these speeches.

Biden’s call for consensus “amounted to the opening of a re-election campaign he plans to formally announce by spring,” The Times’s Peter Baker writes.

Mitt Romney scolded George Santos, the New York representative who fabricated parts of his résumé, telling him that he “shouldn’t have been there.”

The Republican rebuttal from Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas centered on culture-war issues, accusing Biden of surrendering to the “woke mob.”

Here are more takeaways, a fact check and a transcript.

Commentary on the speech

“Smart of Biden to start the speech with conciliation and working together,” The Washington Post’s Henry Olsen wrote.

“Biden made perhaps the best speech of his presidency. The heckling from Republicans only helped make his points,” The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser tweeted.

“Joe Biden sparring with the crowd and winning wasn’t something I expected,” Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican representative, said.

Biden’s message — that he’s delivering the infrastructure spending and economic nationalism Donald Trump promised — is a potent case for re-election, Ross Douthat writes in Times Opinion.

“What did he say on abortion that was new, powerful, energizing or reassuring? Nothing,” the writer Jessica Valenti tweeted. “It came across as an afterthought.”

Biden spent the most time discussing the economy, according to NBC News, followed by infrastructure, policing and taxes.

And:

Brazen Hypocrisy in Our Politics Corrodes the National Soul - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics

By Dov Fischer

The true “battle for the soul of the nation” requires that those on both the right and the left uphold honesty over corruption.

Whether you are Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, something corrosive is happening around you: the corruption of the national soul.

We live in a society. Humans are not robots, and reasonable minds fairly will differ. When a candidate wins an election with 98 percent of the vote, we know the election has been rigged. That is what happens in Russia and in Iran and in Arab countries, not here. The legitimate differences of opinion that see neither side scoring even 60 percent in most American elections reflect the understandable tendency for random cross sections of people to differ.

As long as we differ honestly, we really are OK as a society. One time this side wins, and one time that side wins, but the show goes on honorably enough. And so does the Republic.

Where we encounter our greatest risk is when corruption and brazen hypocrisy aggregate to supersede right and wrong. This is true for all sides. Adam Schiff is a brazen liar and has been for years. In an honest world, Democrats also would recoil from him, not elevate him. Likewise, across the aisle, George Santos is an embarrassment and, even, a case study for psychologists, and honest Republicans — much as the GOP covets the congressional seat he flipped from years of Democrat control — should pounce on him without regard to political consequences. Honesty should matter.

Instead, our political society is rooted in a soulless determination to win all battles at all costs. Nasty and even vicious campaigning is a core element of democracy. Although people tell pollsters they despise negative campaigning, those sorts of disparaging ads typically decide elections. Through it all, though, nothing is worse for the national soul than the brazen hypocrisy all around us.

Overnight, the Democrats became the party of mass illegal immigration while Republicans suddenly cared about border security. Neither side has been honest.

We attempt to teach our children to be honest and noble, to admit missteps and to learn and grow from past errors. But in politics, the way of life is to “tough it out.” Deny the obvious, even as it stares the liar in the face. So, Alejandro Mayorkas tells Congress that the border is secure. Of course he is lying. No one needs to travel to the border to know that. The data document the anarchy. Film crews document the chaos on nightly news. Now that governors like Texas’ Greg Abbott and Florida’s Ron DeSantis have gotten wise by transporting illegal immigrants to places like New York City, Martha’s Vineyard, and Washington, D.C., even the hypocrites suddenly will admit the obvious: The border is not secure. It is refreshing to see and hear New York City Mayor Eric Adams and the Witch from Chicago complaining suddenly about illegal immigration. It had been a nonissue for them as long as Obama and Biden were at work only trying to turn Texas and Florida blue.

The hypocrisy is everywhere. When Elon Musk bought Twitter and announced a new direction for that corrupted social medium with all its fake bots and phony followers, a fifth column that helped throw the 2020 presidential election by blacking out all reportage about Hunter Biden’s laptop and Biden family corruption, the Washington Post — among others who dominate the left-wing media — bewailed the threat to democracy unfolding as a billionaire gained control over a means of communication. Uh-huh. And who owns that Washington Post itself? Jeff Bezos, a billionaire who controls that means of communication.

For decades, it was the Democrats who condemned mass immigration at our southern border. Their main constituencies — White, ethnically Catholic, male union laborers in the Midwestern Rust Belt and Blacks everywhere else — were being devastated financially by the influx of desperate laborers willing to accept dirt-cheap wages. Meanwhile, the Republican white-shoe upper class promoted mass illegal immigration because cheap labor maximizes profits.

At least everyone was putting his cards on the table.

And then the Democrats found that millions of Illegals, once granted amnesty, along with their subsequent generations born on United States soil, change elections. Conservative states like California were turning blue, and Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia were moving in that direction. Yes, the Illegals still wreaked havoc on the wages of lower-income Blacks, but the Democrats determined through trial and error that they own Blacks in their pockets anyway, no matter how poorly Blacks fare under them. So, overnight, the Democrats became the party of mass illegal immigration while Republicans suddenly cared about border security. Neither side has been honest.

Democrats suddenly care about the human rights of South Americans and Latinos, while Republicans suddenly awoke to national security and drug cartels? Just wait and see what will change if the Hispanic vote continues moving rightward. In 20 years, if Hispanics emerge as a Republican constituency, the Right will be promoting illegal immigration, and the Left will be bemoaning border security and fentanyl. Assuming America still exists as a country.

And what indeed of security? Until Eric Swalwell, the expression of “sleeping with the enemy” merely conjured an idiom. Thanks to him, it now conjures an idiot. Imagine: a member of the House Intelligence Committee, Judiciary Committee, and Homeland Security Committee literally devoting intimate bedtime to Fang Fang, a spy for China. Talk about China digging its fangs in. And Dianne Feinstein, another California Democrat, this one on the Senate Intelligence Committee, had a spy for China as her chauffeur. Yet these and their party instead denounce their despised Donald Trump as a national-security threat. As proof, they point to classified documents he took from Washington to his private custody. Why, that was so frightening that law-enforcement agents were dispatched to promenade through Mar-a-Lago in an old-fashioned FBI raid while Attorney General Merrick Garland named a special counsel to investigate.

And then it turned out that Joe Biden also snatched highly classified documents from Washington. One batch landed in an office in Pennsylvania. Another batch in his garage. Right near his Corvette. And a few years earlier, thousands of documents, including classified emails, ended up on a computer server in Hillary Clinton’s bathroom. No FBI raids on Clinton or Joe.

In an honest world, Hillary would have been prosecuted for spoliation of evidence when her roughly 30,000 emails about yoga and wedding dresses were scrubbed clean from her servers and her hard drives smashed by hammer. But she was not prosecuted. Meanwhile, Roger Stone’s house was raided in the middle of the night, and he was subjected to a CNN-televised handcuffed “perp walk.” And Peter Navarro was chained in handcuffs and leg irons when refusing to honor a subpoena from the Pelosi-Cheney Jan. 6 Committee, a kangaroo court comprised of Democrats and a few token “Never-Trump” Republicans selected by Nancy Pelosi for her star chamber. Democracy? Justice? Or blatant double standards?

And then the Supreme Court. Democrats never were bothered that their left-wing SCOTUS majority dominated American law, often supplanting Congress as an ultra vires legislative branch, for nearly half a century. They fabricated legal rulings based on justices’ personal whims, not rooted in stare decisis and actual legal precedent. And then a conservative majority emerged, and suddenly the rules governing the Supreme Court no longer were just. With a 6–3 conservative tilt, because John Roberts occasionally sides with conservatives, the Democrats suddenly determined that the court needs four more justices, exactly four, increasing its bench to 13. By coincidence, that would give the Left a sudden 7–6 majority. Or, for greater justice, more enterprising “progressives” pushed to pack the court up to 15.

This kind of dishonesty, the brazen hypocrisy, gnaws at the nation’s soul. Children grow up amid public dishonesty all around them, with greater access to the lies than ever before, thanks to social media and cable TV outliers. Indeed, it is for that reason that I not only always have avoided MSNBC, CNN, and foolish time wasters like The View but even have come to recoil from Fox News opinion shows. I have lost my patience and tolerance for hacks on the left muttering their scripted excuses and hacks on the right countering with theirs. So many of them, on all sides, are not debating theses and antitheses to arrive at a synthesized Truth. Rather, they simply are parroting their assigned lines, albeit with a bit more panache than the fool whom Biden named as his press spokesperson. And even with her — Madame Jean-Pierre — who can doubt that she stands there only because she is a Democrat Trifecta: Black, Woman (whatever that means), and Lesbian. Not because she is the best and the brightest, nor even the good and the coherent. Imagine if the Washington press corps grilled that one the way they abused Sean Spicer and Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

For that matter, what of a Supreme Court nominee so dishonest and phony that, despite (or because of) her supposed Harvard Law School education, she cannot define what a woman is? That is surprising for truth seekers because she is a jurisprudential mediocrity who never would have been nominated — not in a billion years — if she were not female. Surely, someone in Biden’s office for nominating Black women — Jean-Pierre, the new justice, the U.N. ambassador — knows what a woman is. Maybe the definition can be found in one of those documents in Biden’s garage or in the glove compartment of his Corvette.

The great national danger for all of us is that we will learn to coexist copacetically with hypocrisy, that we will come to accept that “Oh well, that’s politics!”

As long as we recoil from the hypocrisy and lies on all sides, hope for our national soul remains. Once we capitulate, we fall.

And:

The State of the Union Contradiction

If Biden is such a success, why aren’t Americans pleased?

The Editorial Board 

President Biden devoted most of his State of the Union address on Tuesday night to celebrating what he says is a long list of legislative and economic achievements—spending on social programs and public works, subsidies for computer chips, even more subsidies for green energy, and a strong labor market. But if he’s done so much for America, why does most of America not seem to appreciate it?

The latest Washington Post/ABC poll is even worse for the President. Some 41% of Americans say they’re worse off financially than when Mr. Biden became President, while only 16% say they’re better off. Most people—62%—say Mr. Biden has accomplished either not very much or little or nothing. That includes 22% of Democrats.

And here’s the really bad news for Mr. Biden. Some 58% of Democrats say they’d prefer a different party nominee for President in 2024, and he even loses a head to head matchup with former President Trump 48%-44%.

Polls are only snapshots in time, and few voters are focused on the 2024 choices. Mr. Biden could rise if the economy ducks a recession, inflation subsides, and Ukraine pushes Russia out of most or all of its territory.

But it’s worth asking why a Presidency as successful as Mr. Biden and the media claim hasn’t persuaded the public. Part of the answer is polarization, with partisans automatically opposing a President of the other party. But that would explain about 40 percentage points of his disapproval, not the other 16%.

Mr. Biden has contributed to that polarization with the partisan agenda of his first two years after he campaigned as a unifier. He jammed through Congress trillions of dollars in new spending with narrow majorities. His Administration uses regulation to impose the progressive priorities of racial division and climate alarmism, often without proper legal authority. The Supreme Court rebuked him on vaccine mandates and a national eviction moratorium, and it will likely do so again on student-loan forgiveness.

The President’s governing rhetoric has also been as divisive as Mr. Trump’s. He said a Georgia voting law was “Jim Crow 2.0” and Republicans are the equivalent of Bull Connor. Republicans believe in “semi-fascism,” and those who want to use the debt ceiling as leverage to reduce spending represent “chaos and catastrophe.”

This may rally Democrats but it turns off a majority. That may be why White House sources were leaking before Tuesday’s speech that Mr. Biden would avoid such rhetoric and personally edited the drafts to that effect. We’ll see how long Biden the Unifier 2.0 lasts.

***

The President’s biggest problem is that all of his legislative victories haven’t delivered the benefits he promised. The $1.9 trillion Covid bill in March 2021 added so much cash to the economy that it helped to trigger an historic inflation. The result is that most Americans haven’t had a raise in their income after inflation in two years. This takes a shine off the low unemployment rate every time people hit the grocery store. They can see that the nearly $500 billion in spending and tax subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022 had nothing at all to do with reducing inflation.

Americans also observe a fraying social consensus that has them worried about the country. Crime may not be as high as it was in the 1990s, but it has risen sharply in big cities. The record migrant surge across the border would be less worrisome if Mr. Biden seemed to care about stopping it. The fentanyl scourge isn’t his fault, but its breadth betrays a troubling decay in values.

As for foreign policy, Americans can see that the world is becoming more dangerous and its rogues more brazen. Mr. Biden has done a good if often belated job of arming Ukraine, but he failed to deter Vladimir Putin. China has become less bellicose of late but no less aggressive in its actions, as its spy balloon provocation shows. Iran continues to advance its nuclear program despite U.S. and allied protests.

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