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This was written by Dick Morris, not one of my favorite people, but I suspect he has more facts when it comes to the Clinton's because he was involved in their previous campaigns and I never believe anything Hillary says because she always twists and tortures the truth.
Furthermore, when Hillary goes before a Jewish group I definitely do not believe anything she says because she is a panderer par excellence and they are perfect foils ready to be duped. (See 1 below.) and the snake begins her wiggle (See 1a below.)
Now for reality. (See 1b and 1c below.)
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This WSJ Editorial makes some valid points regarding the Tea Party's influence on shaping the Republican Party.
Though Liberals love to demagogue Tea Party Members, as they do anything that affronts their misguided sensibilities, the fact that the vast majority of Tea Partyers are decent patriotic people who care about the direction of our nation is a purposeful overlooked fact. The Liberal Media and Print folk feel compelled to circle the wagons to protect their anointed president and do so by highlighting overblown negatives but the influence of The Tea Party crowd is vital if The Republican Party is ever going to return to its roots, walk the walk and not just talk the talk.
That they offer rational suggestions and hold established Republicans' feet to the fire is a good thing. (See 2 below.)
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Another article in today's WSJ highlighted Michelle Nunn's prospects and attributed her potential success to in fighting by Republicans.
This could certainly prove to be another instance where ego trumps what it takes to win elections.
That said, it is also evident Ms Nunn lacks experience and the only thing that separates her from our inexperienced disaster of a president is that she is white and female.
The fact that her campaign has been all 'Cumbria' and that she shows President Bush with his hand on her shoulder is clever marketing but not the stuff being a Senator is made of.
I still maintain experience is an essential ingredient of leadership. I still believe a conservative view towards the size and cost of government is sane and essential and I still maintain, by now, even the most ardent Obama supporter with any brains should see what a failed president he is. Obama cannot blame everything on others, as he has done for five years. He has been absent except for playing golf and picking up an unearned pay check and perhaps that is good because every time he is engaged he creates a disaster.
Finally, a vote for Ms Nunn is assuredly a vote for Harry Reid and his ability to remain top dog in The Senate. Reid is nothing but a shill for Obama and probably a corrupt one when one delves into his enormous wealth derived from being in The Senate and building a political empire.
Jack Kingston remains my candidate for The Senate because of five prime reasons
a) He has been very good at constituent service.
b) He has been consistent with his conservative credentials and voting record
c) Jack's vast experience on matters of military importance serves our state well because we have many such bases and connected employment. Ironically Sam Nunn, Ms Nunn's father, was responsible for locating many of these bases here and I was proud to support Sam during his term in office and, as I have repeatedly written, urged him twice to run for the presidency.
d) Jack has personal integrity and, as our local paper notes, is very approachable. Unlike the Gingriches, Jack has never been overcome by drinking Potomac Water.
e) Finally, Jack has demonstrated his ability to work with those on the other side.
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Saul Alinsky's playbook. (See 3 below.)
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Does Obama even get it? (See 4 below.)
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Now this is a graduation speech! (See 5 below.)
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Is Tzipi, Netanyahu's 'fig leap?' If she is she doesn’t have Netanyahu’s confidence but he did let her conduct the negotiations without too much interference. If he was concerned that she would give away too much to the Palestinians or the American team led by Martin Indyk that is intractably hostile to the Israeli government, he had nothing to worry about. The Palestinians never gave her chance. (See 6 below.)
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Dick
1) Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has characterized her place in history as akin to a runner in a relay race: taking the baton, running her laps as best she can, and then handing it off to John Kerry, her successor.
But the actual record indicates that, rather than a relay, her role in Iranian sanctions might better be compared to a high hurdles race -- with Clinton erecting the hurdles.
In her full-throated defense of her tenure as America's top diplomat, delivered to the American Jewish Committee last week, Clinton touted her efforts to impose, strengthen and enforce sanctions against Iran in an effort to stop its nuclear weapons program. But the record shows she fought tooth and nail against each new round of sanctions and had her minions in the State Department do all they could to kill them.
In her speech, she said, "We went after Iran's oil industry, banks, and weapons programs, enlisted insurance firms, shipping lines, energy companies, financial institutions and others to cut Iran off from global commerce."
Her supposed role in backing sanctions against Iran was the only specific part of her tenure or legacy that she chose to mention.
But the record contradicts even this claim. Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) who, along with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), led the battle for sanctions, says that she was on the other side.
"Secretary Clinton's comments are a blatant revision of history," he told The Daily Beast. "The fact is the Obama Administration has opposed sanctions every step of the way as was thoroughly documented at the time."
The record is clear, documented in The Daily Beast.
In 2009, the administration opposed the passage of gasoline sanctions against Iran, which eventually passed unanimously.
In 2011, Clinton sent her undersecretary, Wendy Sherman, to state her "strong opposition" to sanctioning the Central Bank of Iran.
Sherman said it would antagonize U.S. allies. She even had her top deputy at the State Department, Bill Burns, meet with top senators to oppose the amendment. It eventually passed unanimously.
Menendez angrily accused the administration of negotiating in bad faith, saying "at your request, we engaged in an effort to come to a bipartisan agreement ... and now you come here and vitiate that agreement."
In 2012, Clinton opposed barring Iranian financial institutions from doing business with SWIFT, the global financial clearinghouse.
The administration, reportedly, was afraid that "the SWIFT-related sanctions would cause too much disruption to the system."
Also in 2012, the administration battled for a six-month delay in additional sanctions. Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, said that "the decision not to crack down immediately on gold exports ... ultimately allowed the Iranians to blow a massive hole in the international financial sanctions." Iran was able to sell oil to Turkey in return for gold to shore up its dwindling hard currency reserves.
Clinton's one apparent contribution to the enforcement of sanctions was her help in lining up votes in the United Nations Security Council, but even this claim may backfire. Recent leaks from Edward Snowden indicate that former U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice requested the National Security Agency help in spying on swing votes in the council: Nigeria, Bosnia, Gabon and Uganda. Did the secretary of State use NSA surveillance to get the votes?
Clinton's role in surveillance has been largely unexplored. It deserves more scrutiny.
1a) Clinton seeks to differentiate herself from Obama on Mideast
In 2011, Clinton sent her undersecretary, Wendy Sherman, to state her "strong opposition" to sanctioning the Central Bank of Iran.
Sherman said it would antagonize U.S. allies. She even had her top deputy at the State Department, Bill Burns, meet with top senators to oppose the amendment. It eventually passed unanimously.
Menendez angrily accused the administration of negotiating in bad faith, saying "at your request, we engaged in an effort to come to a bipartisan agreement ... and now you come here and vitiate that agreement."
In 2012, Clinton opposed barring Iranian financial institutions from doing business with SWIFT, the global financial clearinghouse.
The administration, reportedly, was afraid that "the SWIFT-related sanctions would cause too much disruption to the system."
Also in 2012, the administration battled for a six-month delay in additional sanctions. Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, said that "the decision not to crack down immediately on gold exports ... ultimately allowed the Iranians to blow a massive hole in the international financial sanctions." Iran was able to sell oil to Turkey in return for gold to shore up its dwindling hard currency reserves.
Clinton's one apparent contribution to the enforcement of sanctions was her help in lining up votes in the United Nations Security Council, but even this claim may backfire. Recent leaks from Edward Snowden indicate that former U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice requested the National Security Agency help in spying on swing votes in the council: Nigeria, Bosnia, Gabon and Uganda. Did the secretary of State use NSA surveillance to get the votes?
Clinton's role in surveillance has been largely unexplored. It deserves more scrutiny.
1a) Clinton seeks to differentiate herself from Obama on Mideast
Former secretary of state’s speech to AJC meant to signal to pro-Israel community that tensions ruffled by president will be smoothed over
Former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton addresses the American Jewish Committee Global Forum on Wednesday, May 14, 2014 (photo credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images/AFP)
WASHINGTON (JTA) – A month before her foreign policy autobiography, “Hard Choices,” hits the bookstores, Hillary Rodham Clinton made an easy choice: She pitched her diplomatic credentials to a friendly Jewish audience.
Clinton’s speech to the American Jewish Committee on May 14 was meant to send a signal to the pro-Israel community, insiders say, that a Clinton presidency would smooth over tensions ruffled by the Obama White House. So while she broadly defended Obama administration policies, she also suggested areas where she had differences with the president, such as on Iran.
“President Obama has said that the odds of reaching a comprehensive agreement are no more than 50-50,” Clinton said, referring to the US-led talks between the major powers and Iran on the latter’s nuclear program.
“I personally am skeptical that the Iranians will follow through and deliver. I’ve seen many false hopes dashed over the years,” she said. “We will have to be tough, clear-eyed and ready to walk away and increase the pressure if need be.
“No deal is better than a bad deal,” Clinton said. “From my perspective, we cannot and should not accept any agreement that endangers Israel or our own national security.”
Robert Wexler, the former Democratic congressman from Florida who was the first major Jewish politician to join the Obama campaign, in early 2007, said the differences Clinton is emphasizing reflected not just her worldview, but also the changed foreign policy reality she heads into should she announce for the presidency.
“President Obama, in terms of foreign policy, was elected to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — that was his primary charge,” said Wexler, who now heads the Center for Middle East Peace. “The expectations the American people would have for a President Hillary Clinton would be different. The calling may be to reassert to a degree of American leadership, which is entirely consistent with Secretary Clinton’s worldview.”
Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator under a succession of Republicans and Democrats, including Bill Clinton, said Hillary Clinton was a good soldier for Obama’s bid to transform the world, but also demonstrated understanding that her boss may have overreached.
“She understood the world was not a transformative place, it was transactional,” said Miller, now vice president at the Wilson Center, a foreign policy think tank. “In that respect she was much more hawkish on Syria,” where Clinton joined calls for a US strike on the Assad regime to contain the bloody civil war. Obama opted to seek authorization for a strike from Congress, and then abandoned the option when it was clear he lacked support.
“On Israel-Palestinians she knew it was not going anywhere,” Miller said. “If the president wanted her to focus on it, she did it in a rhetorical way, but she had no interest in being a linchpin.”
That, Miller said, was in contrast to John Kerry, her successor, who made the revival of Israeli-Palestinian talks a centerpiece of his policy only to see them collapse last month.
The June 10 release of “Hard Choices” is widely perceived as Clinton’s opening salvo for a 2016 run for the Democratic presidential nod, the prize Obama took from her in a bitter 2008 primary election. As her Jewish campaign goes forward, a source close to Clinton said, she and others close to her will subtly introduce three areas of Middle East policy in which her 2008 differences with Obama were validated over time.
They include two postures that got her into trouble with the Democratic base in 2008 and helped contribute to her defeat: Her stated opposition during the primaries to meeting with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s then-president, and her support as a US senator from New York for legislation that would have designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist group.
Obama said during the campaign that he would meet with Ahmadinejad, seen as a Holocaust denier and seeker of Israel’s destruction. Obama’s campaign also mercilessly ripped Clinton for backing the Revolutionary Guards designation, likening it to her support for the legislation used by President George W. Bush to go to war with Iraq.
The third difference to be highlighted is Clinton’s opposition during the ’08 campaign to participating in Durban II — the 2009 reprise of the 2001 UN anti-racism conference that devolved into an anti-Israel free-for-all. Obama would not commit during the campaign to boycotting the ’09 conference.
In each case, the source argued, Clinton was vindicated. Ahmadinejad ignored Obama’s spring 2009 call for dialogue with Iran’s leadership. The legislative bid to designate the Revolutionary Guards as terrorist did not pass, but the guards were implicated in the violent repression of mass Iranian protests following the contested 2009 presidential election and were accused of torturing and raping men and women in prisons around Iran.
As for Durban II, the Obama administration at first sought avenues through which US participation would prevent an anti-Israel tone, but eventually conceded this was unlikely and chose not to participate. The person who made the decision was Samantha Power, then a National Security Council member, who had derided Clinton as a “monster” during the campaign and championed engagement in international forums.
Clinton will face fierce resistance from Republicans to any bid to differentiate herself from Obama. Republicans in the US House of Representatives already are investigating her role in securing the consulate in Benghazi, Libya, before and after a September 2012 attack that left four Americans dead.
In her AJC speech, Clinton said she helped shepherd sanctions through Congress that in 2010 set the stage for the pressures on Iran that brought about Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s election.
Sen.Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), a key sponsor of those sanctions, derided the claim.
Sen.Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), a key sponsor of those sanctions, derided the claim.
“The fact is the Obama administration has opposed sanctions against Iran led by Sen. Menendez and me every step of the way, as was thoroughly documented at the time,” Kirk said in an email to JTA, referring to Robert Menendez (D-N.J). “I agree with Secretary Clinton that US sanctions have proven successful, but it was the Congress, not the White House, that led the way.”
At the time, Obama administration officials said they wanted to delay the sanctions until they were undergirded by UN Security Council sanctions, a sequence Clinton noted in her speech. After the Security Council resolutions were in place, Obama green-lighted the congressional sanctions.
Steven Rabinowitz, a publicist who works with Jewish and Democratic groups, said Clinton might have work to do in a pro-Israel community that had avidly embraced her during her Senate career.
“I hope people can draw the distinction between Hillary the person who we know and love and Hillary the loyal secretary of state for the guy who beat her and embraced her,” Rabinowitz said.
Judging from the reaction to her AJC speech, Clinton is on her way. Speaking immediately after her was Matthew Bronfman, a member of the group’s executive council.
“Thank you Madam Secretary, and speaking of hard choices, we know you have a hard choice to make coming up soon, and speaking on behalf of AJC we hope you make the right one,” he said.
The crowd whooped its delight
1b)
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An Iranian news site dedicated to promoting the country's nuclear program published an essay on Tuesday by Ali Asghar Soltanieh - the country's former ambassador to the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog (IAEA) - pushing back against a recent op-ed by Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Kenneth Pollack, in which Pollack had urged that any deal between the P5+1 global powers and Iran must include a provision under which "international inspectors [were] a constant presence at Iran’s nuclear sites... able to go anywhere and see anything." The Soltanieh piece opened by declaring that "there is serious doubt about the intention behind the article," characterizing it as "an attempt to mislead the P5+1, and specifically the United States, to move towards a path which leads to deadlock and possibly a dangerous confrontation." It continued by running through relevant provisions of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) applicable to normal nuclear states, which among other things describes regimes of controlled inspections. Links to the piece were tweeted and retweetedby social media accounts linked to the regime - including by an account linked to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani - but it is not clear that it responds to Pollack's proposal. Pollack acknowledged that the inspection regime he envisioned was not routine but noted that Iran had already accepted that it would not "be treated as a normal nuclear power" until the expiration of whatever comprehensive deal is worked out, a dynamic that was at least partially the result of "Iran’s history of lying about its nuclear program." Trita Parsi - the founder and president of the National Iranian American Council, a lobby that was slammedlast summer by the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee for promoting "propaganda put out by the Iranian regime" - had described Pollack's suggestions as "unwise" and a "recipe for failure with Iran."
NOW Lebanon senior journalist Ana Maria Luca on Wednesdayrounded up assessments from top analysts regarding congressional progress in advancing the Hezbollah International Financing Prevention Act of 2014, which was introduced last week in the Senate after parallel legislation had begun making its way through the House of Representatives. Observers had already unpacked several potential implications of the legislation, which congressional sources declared was designed to "snuff out" the Iran-backed Shiite terror group. Hezbollah has for decades insisted that it is an indigenous Lebanese organization promoting Lebanese interests - a stance that found supporters in pockets of the Western foreign policy community - opposite critics who had long insisted that its willingness to use Lebanese banks for illicit activities, and therefore to expose those banks to the risk of international censure, was difficult to align with such branding. Luca's Wednesday piece quoted sources from the Lebanese banking world worrying over multiple potential impacts on Lebanese banks. It also quoted Washington Institute Senior Fellow Matt Levitt explaining that "the bills are meant to curb Hezbollah's use of the international financial system," and not to damage the Lebanese banking system as such, as well as Mark Dubowitz - the executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) - hailing the new bipartisan legislation as "critical to disrupting Hezbollah's global networks and limiting its ability to finance terror attacks, spread its extremist message, and recruit new members."
Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Tuesday conveyed a statementfrom a joint committee established by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates committing to confronting "regional challenges," the latest in what increasingly appear to be systematic moves by Riyadh to bolster its regional position opposite Iran. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) had already in late April formally invitedJordan and Morocco to integrate themselves into a conventional military alliance under which the Gulf states would trade aid and the new members would potentially provide 300,000 troops to collective efforts. Meanwhile Saudi prince Turki al-Faisal - a top figure in the country’s royal family and its former intelligence chief - went further, speculating that Gulf states would have to acquire "nuclear know-how" to offset Iran. AFP also read a new Saudi-UAE "supreme committee" against the backdrop of tensions between most Arab states, on the one hand, and Qatar, on the other. The wire bluntly assessed that "Qatar is accused of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, to which Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies have long been hostile." Tensions have recently been dampened by Qatari moves to return to the GCC fold,but many analysts take it as a given that the region remains divided between three overarching blocs: the Iranian camp that includes Syria and Hezbollah, the camp of America's traditional Arab allies plus Israel, and an axis composed of Turkey, Qatar, and various country-by-country Brotherhood groups. The Obama administration has faced sustained criticism for being insufficiently supportive of its traditional allies.
Jonathan S. Tobin
Though the latest nuclear talks with Iran failed to yield progress toward an agreement, the Obama administration isn’t rethinking its commitment to engagement with Iran. Having come into office determined to find a way to end the nuclear standoff, President Obama has taken every opportunity to demonstrate that he wishes to create warmer relations with Tehran, even staying largely silent while the Islamists brutally suppressed dissidents in 2009. That’s why he seized upon the faux election last summer that resulted in Hassan Rouhani becoming Iran’s president to justify the decision to trust the regime when it came to the nuclear question. Though the secret negotiations that led to a weak interim agreement with Tehran preceded that vote, Rouhani’s more moderate image has been useful in dampening outrage about the direction of U.S. policy toward Iran which seems oriented more toward détente than actually preventing the regime from attaining nuclear capability.
But yesterday we got another reminder of the naïveté of Western hopes for Rouhani’s moderation. Days after Rouhani had given speech extolling the need for greater Internet freedom in his country, Iranian police arrested six young people and paraded them on national television for the crime of creating an Internet video in which they danced and sang to Pharrell Williams’s song “Happy.” According to Hossein Sajedinia, the head of the Tehran police, the harmless video was “a vulgar clip which hurt public chastity.” But after being forced to publicly repent, and with a worldwide furor growing over their arrest, the six who appeared on screen were freed today, apparently none the worse for wear for their ordeal and humiliation, though their director is still in jail. Rouhani celebrated their release with the following tweet:
So should we be celebrating the advance of human rights in Iran today? And what has this to do with the nuclear talks?
The answer is simple. Despite Iran’s attempt to persuade the world otherwise, it remains a brutal theocracy where anything, even a simple video can land you in jail if it rubs the Islamist authorities the wrong way. Rouhani, a veteran operative of the regime, is no moderate even though he is attempting to put forward a more human face to the world than his predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But power—including everything having to do with the country’s nuclear project—remains in the hands of his boss, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Incidents like the arrest of the video makers are designed to chill any signs of liberalization and dissent. As such, it was quite effective since few are bold enough to risk jail and a TV perp walk on the assumption that international attention will lead to their release. Unlike the lucky six, most Iranians who are arrested by the regime don’t become a trend on Twitter and simply disappear into the bowels of Tehran’s police dungeons.
But the Obama administration may argue that even if Iran is still a tyranny, that shouldn’t affect America’s decision to enter into a nuclear agreement with it. The danger Iran poses to the rest of the world stems from their ability to create a nuclear weapon, not policies designed to repress free spirits.
But the problem with America’s nuclear diplomacy is that it is based on the idea that Iran can be trusted to keep its agreements and that the further loosening of sanctions will aid the country’s progress toward better relations with the West. Unfortunately, Iran has proven time and again that it regards agreements with foreign powers as pieces of paper that it can tear up at will. And once sanctions are lifted, there is little chance the U.S. will ever be able to persuade a reluctant Europe to stop doing business with Iran.
So in order to rationalize a plan of action that is predicated on Iran turning the page from its past as a rogue regime, the U.S. must pretend that a regime that practices religious persecution and represses even the most innocuous sign of dissent is somehow changing. That’s why the administration’s negotiators have not even tried to raise the issues of Iranian sponsorship of terrorism in the talks. The more the discussion centers on Iranian behavior—whether as a backer of terrorists or as a vicious foe of human rights—the harder it will be for the president to persuade Americans that Iran means to keep even a weak deal that will give it plenty of leeway to cheat and get to a bomb.
Thus, far from being irrelevant to the talks that have been going on in Vienna, the “happy” dancers are a reminder that Iran isn’t the country Barack Obama would like it to be. The longer Americans cling to the delusion that Rouhani has genuine power and that he really can moderate the Islamist regime, the less chance there is that they will think clearly about the nuclear threat and a diplomatic process that seems to guarantee that it won’t be averted.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------2) Tea Party Agonistes |
The real reasons that GOP insurgents are losing in the primaries.
The media's latest political line is that the Republican establishment has finally crushed the tea party. The truth, as usual, is more interesting. The tea party has already changed the GOP on policy, and mostly for the better, but it is suffering this year because the candidates and operatives acting in its name have been motivated more by personal than policy agendas. That's a shame because the GOP needs the tea party to prevent it from lapsing back into the do-little caucus of the George W. Bush-Tom DeLay years.
Marco Rubio (Fla.), Ron Johnson (Wis.) and Pat Toomey (Pa.)—those are three Senators elected with tea party support in 2010. Yet they are now part of the Senate GOP mainstream, tugging the conference in a more reform direction. So is Rand Paul on domestic policy. And don't forget New Hampshire's Kelly Ayotte, who breaks with Mr. Paul on foreign policy but is making her mark as one of the Senate's smarter young conservatives.
Former Kentucky senatorial challenger Matt BevinReuters
These Senators won with the help of the tea party wave in 2010, but they also won because they were men and women of accomplishment. The tea party rode these candidates as much as they rode the tea party.
Now consider Matt Bevin, Greg Brannon and Steve Stockman. They are among the tea party champions this year who have lost by large margins in GOP Senate primaries. They didn't lose because the GOP primary electorate has suddenly been captured by "moderates," or some mythical establishment in the Burning Tree locker room.
They lost because they were inferior candidates who differed little from their GOP opponents on policy but seemed less capable of winning in November. GOP voters sensibly opted for the conservatives with the better chance to retake the Senate fromHarry Reid and Chuck Schumer.
Far more than 2010, the tea party this year has also been hijacked by Washington-based groups that have personal axes to grind. That's especially true in Kentucky, where a cabal of former aides to former Senator Jim DeMint force-fed Mr. Bevin's challenge to Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
This wasn't about policy business; it was strictly personal revenge to oust Mr. McConnell as leader and establish the Senate Conservatives Fund, FreedomWorks, RedState and certain talking radio heads as the main GOP power brokers. Mr. Bevin was a weak candidate who attacked Mr. McConnell for supporting the 2008 bank rescue only to have supported it himself while he was in private business. On Tuesday he got about 36% of the vote.
These same Beltway groups also hurt tea party candidates by pushing last year's government shutdown strategy. The shutdown, which had no chance to succeed, marked the low point in recent GOP polling. But far from mobilizing populist outrage against incumbents, the failed strategy seems to have educated Republican voters about the futility of kamikaze gestures and the candidates who endorse them. Voters are seeing through the self-interest.
The shame is that this tea party detour will hurt the very cause of reform its supporters claim to champion. Mr. McConnell was brilliant in uniting his conference against ObamaCare in 2010, but he can also be an overcautious leader who fails to articulate a united GOP message or strategy. Long-time incumbents Mr. McConnell and Thad Cochran (Miss.) are too enamored of spending and need the prod of the tea party to stay on a reform path.
The broader point is that the GOP establishment, to the extent it exists, and the tea party need each other to accomplish their political goals. And at the local level they are often now one and the same. The candidates who win Senate primaries will need grass-roots enthusiasm to prevail in November. And the tea party needs the mainstream GOP incumbents who can win among independents and in states like Illinois, New Hampshire and Maine to have any chance of building a majority large enough to replace ObamaCare.
Democrats and their media allies are pushing the establishment vs. tea party narrative in large part because they want the GOP to be divided in November. The only way to retake the Senate is to disappoint them
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3)If anyone can read this and still say everything is just fine??..Then I guess we have hit bottom or close to it
Calling deadly treatment delays and falsified waiting lists at veterans hospitals "a national embarrassment," Sen. John Thune of South Dakota told Newsmax TV on Thursday that President Barack Obama hasn't shown he even comprehends the scale of the problem or the urgency needed to fix it.
The Obama transition team learned in 2008 that the Department of Veterans Affairs was under-reporting wait times for its patients, The Washington Times reports.
"The president should have been leading the charge to fix this problem and he's been, as usual, you know, following along," Thune said during an extended, two-part interview on "America's Forum" with hosts J.D. Hayworth and John Bachman.
He has introduced a Senate bill to launch an independent investigation into the VA scandal.
By contrast, Thune said, the White House response so far has amounted to the president "talking tough" at a press conference on Wednesday and dispatching one aide to a troubled VA facility.
"When they had the problems with the healthcare Web site rollout, they said, 'We've got all hands on the deck,'" he said. "They spent hundreds of millions of dollars to try and fix it. And they ought to treat this issue with the same seriousness. This is the men and women in uniform who put their lives on the line, who risk everything for us, and they deserve a much more serious response than what they're getting from their commander-in-chief."
Outrage is growing over delays in treatment so severe that veterans have died waiting to receive doctor's appointments, and revelations that officials at backlogged VA hospitals tried to hide the caseload by drafting phony waiting lists.
Thune said he doesn't think White House insiders "fully grasp" the "dimensions of the problems" yet.
With some Democrats in Congress now joining the chorus of calls for Veterans Affairs Secretary Erik Shinseki to resign, Thune said Obama needs to "clean house" at the VA and not wait for media reports to prod him into acting.
White House spokesman Jay Carney has said the president first learned of the hospital delays and cover-ups from a newscast.
Thune urged the president to be better engaged by supporting two pieces of legislation: Thune's bill for an independent VA probe, and a second bill that would make it easier for Shinseki to fire senior VA officials found to be involved in the scandal.
The second bill was blocked by Senate Democrats on Thursday, according to the Washington Times, although it was passed overwhelmingly in the House on Wednesday in a bipartisan vote with 390 members supporting it. It was opposed by 33 House members, all Democrats.
Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida brought the House-passed VA Management Accountability Act to the Senate floor on Thursday seeking its approval before Congress recesses, according to The Blaze.
"I've come to this floor here today to give my colleagues the opportunity to send this to the president before we leave for the Memorial Day recess," Rubio said, The Blaze reported. "We have an opportunity right now to take up the bill that the House just passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority, enact it into law by unanimous consent, and send it to the president so he can sign it."
But Senate Democrats and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent and chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, told Rubio he was moving too fast. Sanders said he'd hold a hearing on the bill when the Senate reconvenes in late June, The Blaze reported.
Rubio, House Speaker John Boehner, and other Republicans said the decision was clearly wrong because the Senate could have moved forward on the VA scandal just before Memorial Day.
Others said it was obviously a politically motivated.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said he was "surprised to see the Senate Democrats block this important, bipartisan bill," according to the Washington Times report. "There's no reason for us not to pass it quickly here in the Senate."
In his Newsmax interview earlier Thursday, Thune predicted that neither his bill nor the Senate version of the House-passed bill — the legislation blocked Thursday afternoon — would get to be debated in the Senate because the Democrats in the majority are allied with public employee unions like those representing VA hospital workers.
But he said public pressure on Senate Democrats could help force a vote.
In the House, two members from Georgia became the first Democrats to demand that Shinseki resign. One, Rep. David Scott, gave an emotional floor speech denouncing VA officials for dishonesty.
"What that tells me is that some Democrats are starting to feel the heat," Thune said.
Thune hopes some of his Senate colleagues across the aisle will start to find their voices on this issue.
"At least here in the Senate, you know, [Majority Leader] Harry Reid has become a foil for the president on so many issues that the president doesn't want to be exposed on or doesn't want to take the heat on. And so it's going to take individual, Democrat-elected officials in the Congress — in the Senate — to really start weighing in, not only privately but publicly."
Thune expressed disappointment that anyone would need to be lobbied to act in this matter.
"You would think that in the interest of America's veterans that we could put the politics aside and recognize that some issues transcend the favored political constituencies of the Democrats here in Washington, and that we ought to be able to get some action," he said.
As for the president, Thune said the VA mess reminds him of Obama's seemingly detached handling of other administration scandals, including the IRS' targeting of conservative PACs. He suggested Obama's hands-off and disengaged style "comes from not having any experience" as a manager.
"The president was in over his head to begin with when it came to running a country with as many complexities as we have," said Thune.
Asked whether Obama has behaved more like an observer-in-chief, or a bystander to a scandal within his own administration, Thune said, "You sure can't say that he's playing the role of commander in chief."
3)If anyone can read this and still say everything is just fine??..Then I guess we have hit bottom or close to it
Recall that Hillary did her college thesis on his writings and Obama writes about him in his books.
Saul Alinsky died about 43 years ago, but his writings influenced those in political control of our nation today.......
Saul David Alinsky, a writer, was an American community organizer and writer. He is generally considered to be the founder of the modern community organizing movement.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4)He is most noted for his book Rules for Radicals.
Died: June 12, 1972, Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA
Education: University of Chicago
Spouse: Irene Alinsky
Books: Rules for Radicals, Reveille for Radicals
Anyone out there think that this stuff isn't happening today in the U.S.?
All eight rules are currently in play
How to create a social state by Saul Alinsky:
There are eight levels of control that must be obtained before you are able to create a social state. The first is the most important.
1) Healthcare? Control healthcare and you control the people.
2) Poverty ? Increase the Poverty level as high as possible, poor people are easier to control and will not fight back if you are providing everything for them to live.
3) Debt ? Increase the debt to an unsustainable level. That way you are able to increase
taxes, and this will produce more poverty.
4) Gun Control? Remove the ability to defend themselves from the
Government. That way you are able to create a police state.
5) Welfare ? Take control of every aspect of their lives (Food, Housing, and Income).
6) Education ? Take control of what people read and listen to like control of the news rooms that is now on hold for further study ? take control of what children learn in school.
7) Religion ? Remove the belief in the God from the Government and schools.
8) Class Warfare ? Divide the people into the wealthy and the poor. This will cause
more discontent and it will be easier to take (Tax) the wealthy with the support of the poor.
Calling deadly treatment delays and falsified waiting lists at veterans hospitals "a national embarrassment," Sen. John Thune of South Dakota told Newsmax TV on Thursday that President Barack Obama hasn't shown he even comprehends the scale of the problem or the urgency needed to fix it.
The Obama transition team learned in 2008 that the Department of Veterans Affairs was under-reporting wait times for its patients, The Washington Times reports.
"The president should have been leading the charge to fix this problem and he's been, as usual, you know, following along," Thune said during an extended, two-part interview on "America's Forum" with hosts J.D. Hayworth and John Bachman.
He has introduced a Senate bill to launch an independent investigation into the VA scandal.
By contrast, Thune said, the White House response so far has amounted to the president "talking tough" at a press conference on Wednesday and dispatching one aide to a troubled VA facility.
"When they had the problems with the healthcare Web site rollout, they said, 'We've got all hands on the deck,'" he said. "They spent hundreds of millions of dollars to try and fix it. And they ought to treat this issue with the same seriousness. This is the men and women in uniform who put their lives on the line, who risk everything for us, and they deserve a much more serious response than what they're getting from their commander-in-chief."
Outrage is growing over delays in treatment so severe that veterans have died waiting to receive doctor's appointments, and revelations that officials at backlogged VA hospitals tried to hide the caseload by drafting phony waiting lists.
Thune said he doesn't think White House insiders "fully grasp" the "dimensions of the problems" yet.
With some Democrats in Congress now joining the chorus of calls for Veterans Affairs Secretary Erik Shinseki to resign, Thune said Obama needs to "clean house" at the VA and not wait for media reports to prod him into acting.
White House spokesman Jay Carney has said the president first learned of the hospital delays and cover-ups from a newscast.
Thune urged the president to be better engaged by supporting two pieces of legislation: Thune's bill for an independent VA probe, and a second bill that would make it easier for Shinseki to fire senior VA officials found to be involved in the scandal.
The second bill was blocked by Senate Democrats on Thursday, according to the Washington Times, although it was passed overwhelmingly in the House on Wednesday in a bipartisan vote with 390 members supporting it. It was opposed by 33 House members, all Democrats.
Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida brought the House-passed VA Management Accountability Act to the Senate floor on Thursday seeking its approval before Congress recesses, according to The Blaze.
"I've come to this floor here today to give my colleagues the opportunity to send this to the president before we leave for the Memorial Day recess," Rubio said, The Blaze reported. "We have an opportunity right now to take up the bill that the House just passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority, enact it into law by unanimous consent, and send it to the president so he can sign it."
But Senate Democrats and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent and chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, told Rubio he was moving too fast. Sanders said he'd hold a hearing on the bill when the Senate reconvenes in late June, The Blaze reported.
Rubio, House Speaker John Boehner, and other Republicans said the decision was clearly wrong because the Senate could have moved forward on the VA scandal just before Memorial Day.
Others said it was obviously a politically motivated.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said he was "surprised to see the Senate Democrats block this important, bipartisan bill," according to the Washington Times report. "There's no reason for us not to pass it quickly here in the Senate."
In his Newsmax interview earlier Thursday, Thune predicted that neither his bill nor the Senate version of the House-passed bill — the legislation blocked Thursday afternoon — would get to be debated in the Senate because the Democrats in the majority are allied with public employee unions like those representing VA hospital workers.
But he said public pressure on Senate Democrats could help force a vote.
In the House, two members from Georgia became the first Democrats to demand that Shinseki resign. One, Rep. David Scott, gave an emotional floor speech denouncing VA officials for dishonesty.
"What that tells me is that some Democrats are starting to feel the heat," Thune said.
Thune hopes some of his Senate colleagues across the aisle will start to find their voices on this issue.
"At least here in the Senate, you know, [Majority Leader] Harry Reid has become a foil for the president on so many issues that the president doesn't want to be exposed on or doesn't want to take the heat on. And so it's going to take individual, Democrat-elected officials in the Congress — in the Senate — to really start weighing in, not only privately but publicly."
Thune expressed disappointment that anyone would need to be lobbied to act in this matter.
"You would think that in the interest of America's veterans that we could put the politics aside and recognize that some issues transcend the favored political constituencies of the Democrats here in Washington, and that we ought to be able to get some action," he said.
As for the president, Thune said the VA mess reminds him of Obama's seemingly detached handling of other administration scandals, including the IRS' targeting of conservative PACs. He suggested Obama's hands-off and disengaged style "comes from not having any experience" as a manager.
"The president was in over his head to begin with when it came to running a country with as many complexities as we have," said Thune.
Asked whether Obama has behaved more like an observer-in-chief, or a bystander to a scandal within his own administration, Thune said, "You sure can't say that he's playing the role of commander in chief."
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5)
McRaven to Grads: To Change the World, Start by Making Your Bed [Watch]
Because we can’t improve upon perfection, and because it’s silly to try and summarize a speech that should be read in full, we present the full copy of Admiral William McRaven’s May 2014 Commencement speech at the University of Texas at Austin. McRaven, BJ ’77, Life Member and Distinguished Alumnus, is the commander of U.S. Special Operations and led Operation Neptune Spear, which resulted to the killing of Osama bin Laden.
Remarks by Naval Adm. William H. McRaven, ninth commander of U.S.Special Operations Command
University-Wide Commencement
The University of Texas at Austin, May 17, 2014.
President Powers, Provost Fenves, Deans, members of the faculty, family and friends and most importantly, the class of 2014. Congratulations on your achievement.
It’s been almost 37 years to the day that I graduated from UT.
I remember a lot of things about that day.
I remember I had throbbing headache from a party the night before. I remember I had a serious girlfriend, whom I later married—that’s important to remember by the way– and I remember that I was getting commissioned in the Navy that day.
But of all the things I remember, I don’t have a clue who the commencement speaker was that evening and I certainly don’t remember anything they said.
So…acknowledging that fact—if I can’t make this commencement speech memorable— I will at least try to make it short.
The University’s slogan is,
“What starts here changes the world.”
I have to admit–I kinda like it.
“What starts here changes the world.”
Tonight there are almost 8000 students graduating from UT.
That great paragon of analytical rigor, Ask.Com says that the average American will meet 10,000 people in their life time.
That’s a lot of folks.
But, if every one of you changed the lives of just ten people– and each one of those folks changed the lives of another ten people—just ten—then in five generations—125 years—the class of 2014 will have changed the lives of 800 million people.
800 million people—think of it—over twice the population of the United States. Go one more generation and you can change the entire population of the world—8 billion people.
If you think it’s hard to change the lives of ten people—change their lives forever—you’re wrong.
I saw it happen every day in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A young Army officer makes a decision to go left instead of right down a road in Baghdad and the ten soldiers in his squad are saved from close-in ambush.
In Kandahar province, Afghanistan, a non-commissioned officer from the Female Engagement Team senses something isn’t right and directs the infantry platoon away from a 500 pound IED, saving the lives of a dozen soldiers.
But, if you think about it, not only were these soldiers saved by the decisions of one person, but their children yet unborn– were also saved. And their children’s children— were saved.
Generations were saved by one decision—by one person.
But changing the world can happen anywhere and anyone can do it.
So, what starts here can indeed change the world, but the question is…what will the world look like after you change it?
Well, I am confident that it will look much, much better, but if you will humor this old sailor for just a moment, I have a few suggestions that may help you on your way to a better a world.
And while these lessons were learned during my time in the military, I can assure you that it matters not whether you ever served a day in uniform.
It matters not your gender, your ethnic or religious background, your orientation, or your social status.
Our struggles in this world are similar and the lessons to overcome those struggles and to move forward—changing ourselves and the world around us—will apply equally to all.
I have been a Navy SEAL for 36 years. But it all began when I left UT for Basic SEAL training in Coronado, California.
Basic SEAL training is six months of long torturous runs in the soft sand, midnight swims in the cold water off San Diego, obstacles courses, unending calisthenics, days without sleep and always being cold, wet and miserable.
It is six months of being constantly harassed by professionally trained warriors who seek to find the weak of mind and body and eliminate them from ever becoming a Navy SEAL.
But, the training also seeks to find those students who can lead in an environment of constant stress, chaos, failure and hardships.
To me basic SEAL training was a life time of challenges crammed into six months.
So, here are the ten lesson’s I learned from basic SEAL training that hopefully will be of value to you as you move forward in life.
Every morning in basic SEAL training, my instructors, who at the time were all Viet Nam veterans, would show up in my barracks room and the first thing they would inspect was your bed.
If you did it right, the corners would be square, the covers pulled tight, the pillow centered just under the headboard and the extra blanket folded neatly at the foot of the rack—rack—that’s Navy talk for bed.
It was a simple task–mundane at best. But every morning we were required to make our bed to perfection. It seemed a little ridiculous at the time, particularly in light of the fact that were aspiring to be real warriors, tough battle hardened SEALs–but the wisdom of this simple act has been proven to me many times over.
If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another.
By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter.
If you can’t do the little things right, you will never do the big things right.
And, if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made—that you made—and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.
If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.
During SEAL training the students are broken down into boat crews. Each crew is seven students–three on each side of a small rubber boat and one coxswain to help guide the dingy.
Every day your boat crew forms up on the beach and is instructed to get through the surfzone and paddle several miles down the coast.
In the winter, the surf off San Diego can get to be 8 to 10 feet high and it is exceedingly difficult to paddle through the plunging surf unless everyone digs in.
Every paddle must be synchronized to the stroke count of the coxswain. Everyone must exert equal effort or the boat will turn against the wave and be unceremoniously tossed back on the beach.
For the boat to make it to its destination, everyone must paddle.
You can’t change the world alone—you will need some help– and to truly get from your starting point to your destination takes friends, colleagues, the good will of strangers and a strong coxswain to guide them.
If you want to change the world, find someone to help you paddle.
Over a few weeks of difficult training my SEAL class which started with 150 men was down to just 35. There were now six boat crews of seven men each.
I was in the boat with the tall guys, but the best boat crew we had was made up of the the little guys—the munchkin crew we called them–no one was over about 5 foot five.
The munchkin boat crew had one American Indian, one African American, one Polish America, one Greek American, one Italian American, and two tough kids from the mid-west.
They out paddled, out-ran, and out swam all the other boat crews.
The big men in the other boat crews would always make good natured fun of the tiny little flippers the munchkins put on their tiny little feet prior to every swim.
But somehow these little guys, from every corner of the Nation and the world, always had the last laugh– swimming faster than everyone and reaching the shore long before the rest of us.
SEAL training was a great equalizer. Nothing mattered but your will to succeed. Not your color, not your ethnic background, not your education and not your social status.
If you want to change the world, measure a person by the size of their heart, not the size of their flippers.
Several times a week, the instructors would line up the class and do a uniform inspection. It was exceptionally thorough.
Your hat had to be perfectly starched, your uniform immaculately pressed and your belt buckle shiny and void of any smudges.
But it seemed that no matter how much effort you put into starching your hat, or pressing your uniform or polishing your belt buckle— it just wasn’t good enough.
The instructors would fine “something” wrong.
For failing the uniform inspection, the student had to run, fully clothed into the surfzone and then, wet from head to toe, roll around on the beach until every part of your body was covered with sand.
The effect was known as a “sugar cookie.” You stayed in that uniform the rest of the day—cold, wet and sandy.
There were many a student who just couldn’t accept the fact that all their effort was in vain. That no matter how hard they tried to get the uniform right—it was unappreciated.
Those students didn’t make it through training.
Those students didn’t understand the purpose of the drill. You were never going to succeed. You were never going to have a perfect uniform.
Sometimes no matter how well you prepare or how well you perform you still end up as a sugar cookie.
It’s just the way life is sometimes.
If you want to change the world get over being a sugar cookie and keep moving forward.
Every day during training you were challenged with multiple physical events– long runs, long swims, obstacle courses, hours of calisthenics—something designed to test your mettle.
Every event had standards—times you had to meet. If you failed to meet those standards your name was posted on a list and at the end of the day those on the list were invited to—a “circus.”
A circus was two hours of additional calisthenics—designed to wear you down, to break your spirit, to force you to quit.
No one wanted a circus.
A circus meant that for that day you didn’t measure up. A circus meant more fatigue– and more fatigue meant that the following day would be more difficult–and more circuses were likely.
But at some time during SEAL training, everyone—everyone– made the circus list.
But an interesting thing happened to those who were constantly on the list. Overtime those students— who did two hours of extra calisthenics– got stronger and stronger.
The pain of the circuses built inner strength-built physical resiliency.
Life is filled with circuses.
You will fail. You will likely fail often. It will be painful. It will be discouraging. At times it will test you to your very core.
But if you want to change the world, don’t be afraid of the circuses.
At least twice a week, the trainees were required to run the obstacle course. The obstacle course contained 25 obstacles including a ten foot high wall, a 30 foot cargo net, and a barbed wire crawl to name a few.
But the most challenging obstacle was the slide for life. It had a three level 30 foot tower at one end and a one level tower at the other. In between was a 200 foot long rope.
You had to climb the three tiered tower and once at the top, you grabbed the rope, swung underneath the rope and pulled yourself hand over hand until you got to the other end.
The record for the obstacle course had stood for years when my class began training in 1977.
The record seemed unbeatable, until one day, a student decided to go down the slide for life– head first.
Instead of swinging his body underneath the rope and inching his way down, he bravely mounted the TOP of the rope and thrust himself forward.
It was a dangerous move–seemingly foolish, and fraught with risk. Failure could mean injury and being dropped from the training.
Without hesitation– the student slid down the rope– perilously fast, instead of several minutes, it only took him half that time and by the end of the course he had broken the record.
If you want to change the world sometimes you have to slide down the obstacle head first.
During the land warfare phase of training, the students are flown out to San Clemente Island which lies off the coast of San Diego.
The waters off San Clemente are a breeding ground for the great white sharks. To pass SEAL training there are a series of long swims that must be completed. One– is the night swim.
Before the swim the instructors joyfully brief the trainees on all the species of sharks that inhabit the waters off San Clemente.
They assure you, however, that no student has ever been eaten by a shark—at least not recently.
But, you are also taught that if a shark begins to circle your position—stand your ground. Do not swim away. Do not act afraid.
And if the shark, hungry for a midnight snack, darts towards you—then summons up all your strength and punch him in the snout and he will turn and swim away.
There are a lot of sharks in the world. If you hope to complete the swim you will have to deal with them.
So, If you want to change the world, don’t back down from the sharks.
As Navy SEALs one of our jobs is to conduct underwater attacks against enemy shipping. We practiced this technique extensively during basic training.
The ship attack mission is where a pair of SEAL divers is dropped off outside an enemy harbor and then swims well over two miles—underwater– using nothing but a depth gauge and a compass to get to their target.
During the entire swim, even well below the surface there is some light that comes through. It is comforting to know that there is open water above you.
But as you approach the ship, which is tied to a pier, the light begins to fade. The steel structure of the ship blocks the moonlight–it blocks the surrounding street lamps–it blocks all ambient light.
To be successful in your mission, you have to swim under the ship and find the keel—the centerline and the deepest part of the ship.
This is your objective. But the keel is also the darkest part of the ship—where you cannot see your hand in front of your face, where the noise from the ship’s machinery is deafening and where it is easy to get disoriented and fail.
Every SEAL knows that under the keel, at the darkest moment of the mission– is the time when you must be calm, composed—when all your tactical skills, your physical power and all your inner strength must be brought to bare.
If you want to change the world, you must be your very best in the darkest moment.
The ninth week of training is referred to as “Hell Week.” It is six days of no sleep, constant physical and mental harassment and– one special day at the Mud Flats—the Mud Flats are area between San Diego and Tijuana where the water runs off and creates the Tijuana slue’s—a swampy patch of terrain where the mud will engulf you.
It is on Wednesday of Hell Week that you paddle down to the mud flats and spend the next 15 hours trying to survive the freezing cold mud, the howling wind and the incessant pressure to quit from the instructors.
As the sun began to set that Wednesday evening, my training class, having committed some “egregious infraction of the rules” was ordered into the mud.
The mud consumed each man till there was nothing visible but our heads. The instructors told us we could leave the mud if only five men would quit—just five men and we could get out of the oppressive cold.
Looking around the mud flat it was apparent that some students were about to give up. It was still over 8 hours till the sun came up–eight more hours of bone chilling cold.
The chattering teeth and shivering moans of the trainees were so loud it was hard to hear anything– and then, one voice began to echo through the night—one voice raised in song.
The song was terribly out of tune, but sung with great enthusiastic.
One voice became two and two became three and before long everyone in the class was singing.
We knew that if one man could rise above the misery then others could as well.
The instructors threatened us with more time in the mud if we kept up the singing—but the singing persisted.
And somehow– the mud seemed a little warmer, the wind a little tamer and the dawn not so far away.
If I have learned anything in my time traveling the world, it is the power of hope. The power of one person—Washington, Lincoln, King, Mandella and even a young girl from Pakistan—Mallah—one person can change the world by giving people hope.
So, if you want to change the world, start singing when you’re up to your neck in mud.
Finally, in SEAL training there is a bell. A brass bell that hangs in the center of the compound for all the students to see.
All you have to do to quit– is ring the bell. Ring the bell and you no longer have to wake up at 5 o’clock. Ring the bell and you no longer have to do the freezing cold swims.
Ring the bell and you no longer have to do the runs, the obstacle course, the PT– and you no longer have to endure the hardships of training.
Just ring the bell.
If you want to change the world don’t ever, ever ring the bell.
To the graduating class of 2014, you are moments away from graduating. Moments away from beginning your journey through life. Moments away starting to change the world—for the better.
It will not be easy.
But, YOU are the class of 2014—the class that can affect the lives of 800 million people in the next century.
Start each day with a task completed.
Find someone to help you through life.
Respect everyone.
Know that life is not fair and that you will fail often, but if take you take some risks, step up when the times are toughest, face down the bullies, lift up the downtrodden and never, ever give up–if you do these things, then next generation and the generations that follow will live in a world far better than the one we have today and— what started here will indeed have changed the world—for the better.
Thank you very much. Hook ‘em horns.
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Jonathan S. Tobin
Israel’s far left Meretz Party doesn’t often offer much in the way of insight about either the Middle East peace process or the country’s government, but today the group’s leader Nitzan Horowitz spoke at least a partial truth when he referred to Justice Minister Tzipi Livni as nothing more than a “fig leaf” for Prime Minister Netanyahu. In an interview with the Times of Israel’s David Horowitz, the head of what is left of the once dominant “peace camp’ decried Livni’s continued presence in the Cabinet. Horowitz’s evaluation of Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas as a man of peace and willingness to place a good deal of the blame for the collapse of the peace process on Netanyahu is divorced from the facts and explains why his party and its allies retain only a small sliver of support from the Israeli public. But his comments were generally on target with respect to the anomalous position of Livni inside the government of the man who has been her nemesis.
An earlier Times of Israel report documented the blowback inside the country’s government about Livni’s decision to meet with Abbas in London last week even though Netanyahu had suspended negotiations with the PA after its alliance with Hamas. Reportedly, Netanyahu was livid at her insubordination and wanted to fire her. But after calming down, the prime minister realized that if he made Livni and her small parliamentary faction walk the plank, she would generate a coalition crisis that would leave him with only a small majority in the Knesset. That would put him at the mercy of his right-wing partner/antagonist Naphtali Bennett, the head of the Jewish Home Party, who used Livni’s excursion to both call for her resignation and to posture at the prime minister’s expense to the voters.
In the end, Livni accomplished nothing with her mission to Abbas. He is no more willing to budge an inch toward peace now than he was throughout the long months of negotiations during which his representatives stonewalled the eager Livni who headed Israel’s delegation. But the dustup involving the prime minister and the woman who has always thought that she, and not Netanyahu, should be leading the country is interesting because it illustrates just how wrongheaded the critics who bash Israel’s government as inflexibly right-wing really are.
Americans who buy into the mainstream media’s reflexive dismissal of Netanyahu as “hard-line” (a word that many readers may think is his first name) and intransigent, need to understand that the term tells us nothing about his policies. When he began his current term in office in 2013, by offering Livni a major Cabinet post (the Justice Ministry) and the portfolio for peace talks with the Palestinians. Doing so was more or less the equivalent of President Obama choosing Mitt Romney to be secretary of state. Such alliances are, of course, less unusual in parliamentary systems, and especially so in Israel where no party has ever won an absolute majority in the Knesset. But it should be understood that Livni campaigned in the last election as a critic of Netanyahu’s peace policies and was then given an opportunity to prove him wrong by being handed the chance to strike a deal with Abbas. While the failure of the initiative championed by Secretary of State John Kerry is rightly considered to be his fiasco, the unwillingness of the Palestinians to come even close to satisfying Livni — the one Israeli that the Obama administration thought was most likely to make peace — tells us everything we need to know about the Palestinians’ responsibility for the collapse of the talks.
Rather than being the beard for Netanyahu whose purpose it is to fool the world into thinking that Israel wanted peace as Meretz and other leftist thinks, Livni’s presence at the table with the Palestinians is actually the proof that if Abbas wanted peace and an independent state, he could have it. Livni doesn’t have Netanyahu’s confidence but he did let her conduct the negotiations without too much interference. If he was concerned that she would give away too much to the Palestinians or the American team led by Martin Indyk that is intractably hostile to the Israeli government, he had nothing to worry about. The Palestinians never gave her chance.
Some may think she is serving as a fig leaf for Netanyahu but if they thought more seriously about her role in the peace process over the past year they would realize that her presence in the government did nothing to ease criticism from Washington or from the usual suspects who like to bash the Jewish state. Instead, she proved her theories and those of other Netanyahu critics wrong by trying and failing to get the Palestinians to take yes for an answer. If she stays in the government, and given her history of rank opportunism and love of office, there’s no reason to think she won’t, it will be to continue to serve as a warning to Netanyahu’s detractors that their accusations of Israeli intransigence are without a factual basis. That isn’t a particularly comfortable role for her or Netanyahu. But it does illustrate how foolish those who still laud Abbas as a man of peace really are.
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