I do not do it because I am a conservative. I do not do it because I am a racist. I do not do it because I wish to preen my feathers for having been correct.
I do so because I care about the future of our nation, the economic prospects for my kids, theirs and those to come and because I went to law school. I do it because I truly believe there are right and wrongs that should guide us, because we are a nation based on a written and codified set of laws, because our Republic is fragile and depends upon an informed and participating citizenry and because I am a Jew who feels some connection to the principles written in our Talmud!.
When I see these values under attack it is of deep concern and the more I believe it is purposeful I become enraged.
I do not get paid for my memos. My wife believes, and from her perspective rightly so, I spend an inordinate amount of time writing, posting and sending them.
I guess I am driven, hooked if you will, and my memos provide a psychological outlet just as going to the gym, doing pool therapy and tennis provides a physical release.
This is why I look forward to getting back to piano lessons because I know, should I live long enough, it will replace my possible inability to play tennis and I need a fall back.
And then we learn Lerner's e mails have dissolved forever as has her hard drive etc.
Obama alleged Lerner's testimony and the claim the IRS broke our 4th Amendment laws was simply a phony manufactured political hatchet job.
If this is not cause for a special prosecutor and ultimate impeachment, should it prove warranted, then I suspect our nation has thrown away its belief in upholding our laws.
Jay Selkow, is an attorney who is moving forward with a suit representing aggrieved clients, that will probably be more effective than what Congress does, in getting at the truth and the bottom of this 'phony' obfuscation.
So what is front and center - Green protests about pollution when most of their claims are based on specious science or yet unproved science and now we have raised the tag of a football team to the level of a national crisis.
Talk about a nation imploding and hysterical over misguided priorities at a time when the world and our influence is crashing.
Meanwhile, I remain at my post and will continue supporting candidates for office I believe are qualified and possess integrity. This is why I am voting for Jolene Byrne, Jack Kingston and Bob Johnson in the July 22 run-off! (See 1, 1a and 1b below.)
===
Gone, gone, gone? No, not Lerner's e mails but Iraq!
Iraq was pasted together by The West without consideration of tribal and ethnic disparities and hatreds and now we are paying the price for this failed patchwork. Therefore, once GW rid Iraq of a tyrant and permitted a democratic vote, the nation replaced one disaster with another. This simply exacerbated those continuing tribal hatreds and discord.
That said, Obama's removal of all American forces permitted the implosion we are currently experiencing. Had American troops remained, the stabilization, GW accomplished, against all odds and partisan rebuke, might have continued.
To make matters even worse, Obama naively believed the threat of Jihad, Taliban and radical Islamist's was no longer simply because he was able to kill the head snake - Osama!
Now Obama is trying to shift blame, as is his habit, to Cheney!
Obama would rather fight straw men than earn his pay because he is incapable of doing otherwise and functions so far below that pay grade.
Blaming GW and Cheney, for any past mistakes, does not dispel the consequences of Obama's decisions which have placed solutions to the Iraq problem beyond reach.
I do not believe Obama will do anything that will prove effective because he has too many drawn and faded red lines left to history.
God help the world and America! (See 2, 2a and 2b below.)
===
Palestinian Media Watch, gets behind the news from The Middle East because they virtually follow all media and news output from that region. (See 3 below.)
---
The owner of The Wall Street Journal and a naturalized citizen, Rupert Murdoch, writes a compelling op ed why immigration reform is critical. (See 4 below.)
===
Why people zone out Hillary!
There are enough articles,books, interviews about her to cover the earth but it boils down to three or four basics.
Hillary is a liar,
Hillary is a cold fish.
Hillary is self serving.
Hillary is electable because Americans are capable of being fooled time and again - Obama is my current proof .(See 5 below.)
===
Dick
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1) The Insiders: Democrats should want a special prosecutor for the IRS scandal
In light of the Friday announcement that the IRS has lost an “untold” number of e-mails from Lois Lerner and six other IRS employees, it is safe to assume Lerner interrupted her taxpayer-funded retirement to hop on a cocktail table somewhere and do a fistpump. And you can bet there were high-fives at the Justice Department and thinly disguised giggles and thumbs-up at the White House.
The audacity of this takes stonewalling to a whole new level. It used to be that if you wanted to “stonewall,” you would just keep quiet. But this administration’s cronies will plead the fifth, conveniently not find evidence, drag their feet, shrug, cry partisanship and expect people to just get over it.
So far, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has taken point in the investigation. Issa announced yesterday that he has issued a subpoena for the hard drive that the IRS claims irreparably crashed. He also subpoenaed IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, who will now face questioning from the House oversight committee next week. I don’t want to prejudge Koskinen’s testimony, but I have a feeling it is safe to assume he won’t know answers to many of the questions he is asked, won’t recall any specific details and, as much as he wants to “cooperate,” won’t be able to answer technical questions about Lerner’s hard drive.
The corrosive effect of this diminishes America’s legal authority and makes for bad politics for the Democrats in November. How can the Democrats defend these “lost” e-mails? Who in a competitive 2014 race can keep a straight face and say they believe this president’s claims? If I were a Democrat, I would take Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp’s (R-Mich.) good advice and support a special prosecutor. It is the only way for Democrats to put distance between themselves and this grotesque violation of the public trustThe need for a special prosecutor is obvious on many fronts. After all, the key witness has pled the Fifth. House oversight committee Ranking Member Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) declared “the case is solved and if it were up to me, I would wrap this case up and move on.” And we can’t forget the president’s definitive, premature pronouncement that there was not a“smidgen of corruption” in the IRS scandal. (Sidenote to the White House press corps: Someone should ask how exactly the president defines “smidgen.”) Maybe this “missing” evidence will be the straw that broke the camel’s back for the Democrats.
They say where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Well, this is more than just a little smoke – Washington is choking on it. Democrats should want the political cover of supporting the appointment of a special prosecutor. They will need protection from the guffaws, disgust and outright retribution that will follow this scandal to the ballot box in November.
The IRS’s claim that it lost the e-mails of multiple key employees, at precisely the moment that Congress began looking into the agency’s unethical and illegal political persecutions, challenges even the most credulous mind.
It is very difficult to permanently destroy an e-mail even if you are trying to do so. The proposition that a few hard-drive crashes, which conveniently afflicted the computers of those involved in the agency’s targeting of conservative groups, would permanently wipe out those e-mails beyond recovery beggars belief. Half the strip malls in this country have electronics stores that will, for a fee, recover information from a damaged hard drive. Assuming that the drive in question was not, say, smashed to bits with a sledgehammer and then nuked in a microwave, the information on it should be recoverable.
And beyond that, the IRS has a legal obligation to retain e-mails and other documents, and it is difficult to take seriously the proposition that fulfilling that legal obligation would be left to chance. In earlier congressional testimony, former IRS commissioner John Koskinen confirmed that agency e-mails are stored on backup servers.
And beyond even that, this administration is infamous for its attempts to evade examination of its e-mail records: EPA administrator Lisa Jackson went so far as to cook up a phony e-mail account – under the comical name “Richard Windsor” — to cover her tracks.
The IRS’s version of events heaps implausibility upon implausibility upon implausibility. And given the agency’s well-established history of dishonesty regarding its political persecutions — Lerner’s staged press-conference questions, misleading of congressional investigators — the possibility that the agency’s executives are flat-out lying to Congress and to the public cannot be discounted.
The matter at hand is a serious one. While IRS employees were openly campaigning for Barack Obama on agency time — a violation for which a handful were given largely symbolic reprimands — the very branch of that awesomely powerful law-enforcement agency charged with handling the affairs of nonprofit and tax-exempt groups was illegally targeting organizations based on their political affiliations while Democratic elected officials, Michigan senator Carl Levin among them, hectored the agency to do more.
This was not a lapse in judgment or a series of unfortunate events. This was an organized campaign to use IRS resources — including its ability to launch criminal prosecutions — for political purposes. We know from other Lerner e-mails that have been released that the IRS was, at the suggestion of Rhode Island Democratic senator Sheldon Whitehouse, looking for a way to “piece together” a criminal case against the groups it was targeting. Lerner and lawyers at the Justice Department discussed coordinating with the Federal Election Commission in this crusade. It is worth noting that the “crime” with which Lerner et al. wanted to charge those conservative nonprofits was failing to adequately disclose what political activities they would be engaged in — even though under the law they are explicitly permitted to engage in political activity.
We have no doubt that Lois Lerner’s hard drive has in fact been compromised. We’d be shocked if it hadn’t been. Goodness knows what else is being done with evidence while Congress proceeds at its customary majestic pace. The question here is not only the crime that has been committed but whether there is a crime in progress.
1b) Visualize General George Patton addressing everyone today.
"The state of Iraq as we know it is gone, and it's not going to be reconstituted," he told "The Steve Malzberg Show."
"We should snuggle up comfortable with the Kurds in Kurdistan, who have always been pro-American and actually have a functioning society and state right now. We should give help to the Maliki government, sufficient to settle the current conflict so it just doesn't turn into a humanitarian disaster," Hayden said.
"For example, there's fighting around Beiji right now, the oil refinery north of Baghdad. Baghdad needs that for that part of the country to survive, and so we've got to settle the lines of this conflict in a way that Nouri al-Maliki's surviving state, which I'll call Shiastan, has Beiji within it.
"Then we've got Sunnistan, and that's the state under the control of ISIS right now, and frankly, we've got to treat that as if it were a safe haven for terrorists and begin to think about it the way we had thought about Waziristan for the last decade-plus. That's a tough message, and I'm afraid that's where we are.
"Now we're at a point where we really don't have good options," Hayden told Malzberg.
Hayden said "Sunnistan" consists of western Iraq and eastern Syria. "There is no border now," he said.
"This is all going to be very, very hard going forward, and we frankly may have to limit our objectives. In other words, seek to achieve things less than we would have thought to achieve had we made different decisions a few years back."
In another Newsmax TV appearance on Wednesday, Hayden, who was also director of the National Security Agency, said intelligence, not the jurisdiction of a criminal trial, should be the key focus of the government as it pertains to Ahmed Abu Khatallah, suspected ringleader of the 2012 attacks on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.
"Right now, he should be subject to intense intelligence interrogation," Hayden told hosts J.D. Hayworth and John Bachman on "America's Forum."
"Frankly, I'm a bit indifferent to what happens in the court case if and when that comes later. It's a severable decision. Right now, intelligence. Get intelligence from this individual."
Beyond that, e-mail is a network function; copies of communications are generally available from multiple locations. It is not an IRS e-mail server that is alleged to have crashed, but the individual computer used by Lois Lerner, who ran the IRS unit responsible for tax-exempt organizations and is at the center of the agency’s campaign of harassment and intimidation of conservative groups. The IRS claims that it wipes its servers clean every six months and that its backup method is — and we are not making this up — having employees print out their e-mails for filing. The missing e-mails from Lerner run to about 50,000, and the IRS has nearly 90,000 employees — is the agency really filing away 4.5 billionprintouts every other year? Perhaps in a federal warehouse like the one at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark?
And beyond that, the IRS has a legal obligation to retain e-mails and other documents, and it is difficult to take seriously the proposition that fulfilling that legal obligation would be left to chance. In earlier congressional testimony, former IRS commissioner John Koskinen confirmed that agency e-mails are stored on backup servers.
And beyond even that, this administration is infamous for its attempts to evade examination of its e-mail records: EPA administrator Lisa Jackson went so far as to cook up a phony e-mail account – under the comical name “Richard Windsor” — to cover her tracks.
The IRS’s version of events heaps implausibility upon implausibility upon implausibility. And given the agency’s well-established history of dishonesty regarding its political persecutions — Lerner’s staged press-conference questions, misleading of congressional investigators — the possibility that the agency’s executives are flat-out lying to Congress and to the public cannot be discounted.
The matter at hand is a serious one. While IRS employees were openly campaigning for Barack Obama on agency time — a violation for which a handful were given largely symbolic reprimands — the very branch of that awesomely powerful law-enforcement agency charged with handling the affairs of nonprofit and tax-exempt groups was illegally targeting organizations based on their political affiliations while Democratic elected officials, Michigan senator Carl Levin among them, hectored the agency to do more.
This was not a lapse in judgment or a series of unfortunate events. This was an organized campaign to use IRS resources — including its ability to launch criminal prosecutions — for political purposes. We know from other Lerner e-mails that have been released that the IRS was, at the suggestion of Rhode Island Democratic senator Sheldon Whitehouse, looking for a way to “piece together” a criminal case against the groups it was targeting. Lerner and lawyers at the Justice Department discussed coordinating with the Federal Election Commission in this crusade. It is worth noting that the “crime” with which Lerner et al. wanted to charge those conservative nonprofits was failing to adequately disclose what political activities they would be engaged in — even though under the law they are explicitly permitted to engage in political activity.
We have no doubt that Lois Lerner’s hard drive has in fact been compromised. We’d be shocked if it hadn’t been. Goodness knows what else is being done with evidence while Congress proceeds at its customary majestic pace. The question here is not only the crime that has been committed but whether there is a crime in progress.
1b) Visualize General George Patton addressing everyone today.
It would go something like this...
ATTENTION!
To ALL those whining, panty-waisted, pathetic Citizens, it's time for a little refresher course on exactly why we Americans occasionally have to fight wars to keep this nation great.
See if you can tear yourself away from your "reality" TV and Starbucks for a minute, pull your head out of your ass--and
LISTEN UP!!!
Abu Ghraib is not "torture" or an "atrocity."
Got that?
Islamic Extremists are peaceful people?
My Ass!
Millions of these warped misled sons-of-bitches are plotting, as we speak, to destroy our country and our way of life any way they can.
Some of them are here among us now.
Millions of these warped misled sons-of-bitches are plotting, as we speak, to destroy our country and our way of life any way they can.
Some of them are here among us now.
They don't want to convert you and don't want to rule you. They believe you are a vile infestation of Allah's paradise. They don't give a shit how "progressive" you are, how peace-loving you are, or how much you sympathize with their cause.
They want your ass dead, and they think it is God's will for them to do it. Some think if we give them a hug or listen to them, then they'll like us, and if you agree -
then, you are a pathetic dumb ass!
then, you are a pathetic dumb ass!
If they manage to get their hands on a nuke, chemical agents, or even some anthrax -- you will wish to God we had hunted them down and killed THEM while we had the chance.
How many more Americans must be beheaded?
You've fallen asleep AGAIN - get your head out of your ass!
You may never get another chance!
You've fallen asleep AGAIN - get your head out of your ass!
You may never get another chance!
NOW GET OFF YOUR SORRY ASS
and pass this on to any and every person you give a damn about - if you ever gave a damn about anything !
and pass this on to any and every person you give a damn about - if you ever gave a damn about anything !
DISMISSED!
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2) Gen. Hayden: The State of Iraq Is Gone
The country of Iraq is, for all intents and purposes, dead and has been replaced by three successor states, former CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden told Newsmax TV Wednesday.
"The state of Iraq as we know it is gone, and it's not going to be reconstituted," he told "The Steve Malzberg Show."
"It's certainly not going to be reconstituted by [Prime Minister] Nouri al-Maliki.''
He said the only way out of the Iraq mess might be a science fiction-type scenario.
"[I'd] get in the way-back machine, go back three years and undo some incredibly unwise decisions that we made then. That's really the nub of the issue,'' he said.
"We've got three successor states there now," Hayden, a retired four star Air Force general added. "As much as we might look for opportunities to keep Iraq together, we need to be prepared for the reality that it's not going to stay together.
"[I'd] get in the way-back machine, go back three years and undo some incredibly unwise decisions that we made then. That's really the nub of the issue,'' he said.
"We've got three successor states there now," Hayden, a retired four star Air Force general added. "As much as we might look for opportunities to keep Iraq together, we need to be prepared for the reality that it's not going to stay together.
"For example, there's fighting around Beiji right now, the oil refinery north of Baghdad. Baghdad needs that for that part of the country to survive, and so we've got to settle the lines of this conflict in a way that Nouri al-Maliki's surviving state, which I'll call Shiastan, has Beiji within it.
"Then we've got Sunnistan, and that's the state under the control of ISIS right now, and frankly, we've got to treat that as if it were a safe haven for terrorists and begin to think about it the way we had thought about Waziristan for the last decade-plus. That's a tough message, and I'm afraid that's where we are.
"Now we're at a point where we really don't have good options," Hayden told Malzberg.
Hayden said "Sunnistan" consists of western Iraq and eastern Syria. "There is no border now," he said.
"This is all going to be very, very hard going forward, and we frankly may have to limit our objectives. In other words, seek to achieve things less than we would have thought to achieve had we made different decisions a few years back."
In another Newsmax TV appearance on Wednesday, Hayden, who was also director of the National Security Agency, said intelligence, not the jurisdiction of a criminal trial, should be the key focus of the government as it pertains to Ahmed Abu Khatallah, suspected ringleader of the 2012 attacks on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.
"Right now, he should be subject to intense intelligence interrogation," Hayden told hosts J.D. Hayworth and John Bachman on "America's Forum."
"Frankly, I'm a bit indifferent to what happens in the court case if and when that comes later. It's a severable decision. Right now, intelligence. Get intelligence from this individual."
U.S. Special Forces captured Abu Khatallah over the weekend near Benghazi. CNN reports that he had been on the U.S. government's radar since shortly after the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the diplomatic compound in Benghazi that resulted in the deaths of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others.
Abu Khatallah was not in hiding, according to CNN, and had given multiple media interviews even after his name surfaced as the possible mastermind of the attacks.
The network reports that Abu Khatallah surfaced after years in prison under Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi "to form an Islamist militia and later became associated with Ansar al-Sharia, a group U.S. officials blamed for the 2012 attack."
Samantha Power, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has indicated that Abu Khatallah will be presented to federal court for criminal prosecution, a subject that has sparked intense controversy in Washington.
Some on the right, including Arizona Sen. John McCain, are calling for the accused to be held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, because giving him Miranda rights and trying him in the United States could jeopardize U.S. intelligence.
Hayden countered that there exists a technical, legal question about whether Abu Khatallah can be considered an enemy combatant, since the use of that term is "tied tightly to the authorization for the use of military force right after 9/11."
"That definition is those responsible for or supporting the attacks of 9/11. Frankly, that gets to be a pretty thin tether when you forward all the way up to what happened in Benghazi a couple of years back."
The United States should keep the suspect on the naval ship where he's being held "for as long as he has intelligence value," said Hayden, who noted the irony that President Barack Obama immediately did away with the 60-day threshold used to get "actionable intelligence" out of a terrorist under the George W. Bush administration.
He also cautioned the Obama administration not to rule out Guantanamo Bay for this or future terror suspects.
"In my heart of hearts, I don't think it's a good position to say that Guantanamo is not an acceptable answer for anyone we might capture now or in the future," he said.
Abu Khatallah was not in hiding, according to CNN, and had given multiple media interviews even after his name surfaced as the possible mastermind of the attacks.
The network reports that Abu Khatallah surfaced after years in prison under Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi "to form an Islamist militia and later became associated with Ansar al-Sharia, a group U.S. officials blamed for the 2012 attack."
Samantha Power, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has indicated that Abu Khatallah will be presented to federal court for criminal prosecution, a subject that has sparked intense controversy in Washington.
Some on the right, including Arizona Sen. John McCain, are calling for the accused to be held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, because giving him Miranda rights and trying him in the United States could jeopardize U.S. intelligence.
Hayden countered that there exists a technical, legal question about whether Abu Khatallah can be considered an enemy combatant, since the use of that term is "tied tightly to the authorization for the use of military force right after 9/11."
"That definition is those responsible for or supporting the attacks of 9/11. Frankly, that gets to be a pretty thin tether when you forward all the way up to what happened in Benghazi a couple of years back."
The United States should keep the suspect on the naval ship where he's being held "for as long as he has intelligence value," said Hayden, who noted the irony that President Barack Obama immediately did away with the 60-day threshold used to get "actionable intelligence" out of a terrorist under the George W. Bush administration.
He also cautioned the Obama administration not to rule out Guantanamo Bay for this or future terror suspects.
"In my heart of hearts, I don't think it's a good position to say that Guantanamo is not an acceptable answer for anyone we might capture now or in the future," he said.
2a) Is a third Iraq war imminent?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The latest Iraq war is between Iraq’s pro-Iranian Shiite government and pro-Al Qaeda Sunni rebels. It boils down to Iran vs. Al Qaeda, radical Shiites versus radical Sunnis. The first rule of foreign policy is if your enemies are killing each other, don’t step in to stop them.
What we’ve seen in Syria, and now in Iraq, is the early phase of a 30-year civil war between Shiites and Sunnis, which will go from region to region, country to country, tribe to tribe. Fighters will become increasingly radical and brutal, and they will be fueled by Arab oil money. For them, it is a fight about religion, power, geography and resources. And it could well be a fight to the finish.
America has a choice: We can be caught in the middle of this generational war, propping up this side or that, sometimes switching sides. Or we can figure out what our underlying strategic interests in the region are and find a way to achieve them that doesn’t involve U.S. forces or military assistance.
Sadly, our leaders are spending their efforts blaming each other for what went wrong rather than finding a way out of the mess. It’s like listening to your kids arguing, “It’s not my fault, hestarted it” . . . “No, it wasn’t me, she’s the one who started it!”
Iraq is descending once again into a brutal civil war, and what’s Washington doing? Wringing its hands and blaming the other guy! Bush supporters say it’s all Obama’s fault for failing to leave a residual force in Iraq after we won the war. Obama supporters say the original sin was Bush’s flawed decision to invade Iraq over a decade ago.
Enough already! Let’s just agree it’s everybody’s fault. Bush shouldn’t have gone into Iraq and Obama shouldn’t have gotten out. There is plenty of blame to go around for past mistakes, but we are where we are and the question now is, what do we do?
An important but often forgotten test for American foreign policy decisions is what is in our country’s national interest. It’s not about what is best for Iraq or Afghanistan or anyone else. The question is what’s best for America. We have three sustaining vital strategic interests in the Middle East: oil, terrorists and Israel. We want their oil, we don’t want their terrorists and we want Israel to survive in an increasingly dangerous neighborhood.
Oil
As the region descends into generational civil war, Shiites and Sunnis will target each other’s oil fields and refineries. Unless we’re prepared to occupy the entire region for decades, we should face the fact we, America plus the world, are not going to get our oil from a war zone. Arab oil will no longer be cheap, abundant or secure, and it is unlikely to be so ever be again.
At a minimum, America needs to be energy independent. We should work with our Canadian and Mexican allies to create a North American energy corridor. In the last several years American technology, perseverance and ingenuity have developed ways to find, extract and bring to market our own oil and natural gas. American shale energy is so plentiful it will satisfy our own needs and soon be enough to make us the energy supplier to the world. American oil and natural gas can replace Arab oil and gas, but only if we have the political will to take the shackles off the American energy industry. There is violence today in Iraq, and experts are talking about a new floor of $5-per-gallon gasoline. We can no longer hold our economy hostage to warring tribes in the Middle East.
Fracking and horizontal drilling can be done safely and environmentally responsibly if we require the best industry practices. Approving the Keystone XL pipeline, immediately, would show the world that America has set out on a different course and is committed to developing an alternative to Middle East oil.
Terrorists
Some say we must re-engage in Iraq to prevent Al Qaeda from seizing control and using it as a launching pad for attacks against Americans. That’s the same argument the same people used to justify our decade-long, unsuccessful, nation-building efforts in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda has established a presence in dozens of countries throughout North Africa, the Middle East, the Levant, the Arabian Peninsula, all the way to South Asia. Al Qaeda can use countries from Libya to Syria to Pakistan to threaten Americans; an American military presence in all of them is unrealistic.
To keep terrorists from our shores, we must commit to securing our borders and focus our intelligence-gathering on possible terrorists rather than the broad American public. Our airline security system gives Granny from Grand Rapids, who is taking the grandkids to Disney World, the same level of scrutiny it gives a young man who has traveled multiple times to the tribal regions of Pakistan. We gather intelligence on hundreds of millions, rather than zeroing in on those with terrorist profiles. By focusing on everyone, we’re focusing on no one. Our current system wastes time and resources. We need to fix it.
Israel
We may not have a formal defense treaty with Israel, but we do have moral and strategic interests in helping it survive in a dangerous neighborhood that is about to get even more dangerous. We should do everything possible to give Israel the tools it needs to defend itself. Period.
Some say we’ve paid too high a price in Iraq to lose it now. Nearly 5,000 Americans lost their lives and tens of thousands were injured in the Iraq War. They and their families will bear the mental and physical scars of battle for their lifetimes. We’ve spent well over a trillion dollars in American treasure in oil-rich Iraq. All of that is true, and it’s tragic. But it is also in the past. There is nothing we can do to erase that, and very little we can do to “save” Iraq.
The brutal truth is we wanted Iraq to be a democratic and free nation more than the Iraqis did. There are 65,000 American-trained and equipped soldiers in the Iraqi Army running away from 2,000 Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) marauders. The sight of Iraqi soldiers taking off their uniforms and throwing aside their weapons in hopes of blending into the crowd as Al Qaeda/ISIS advances says it all. The Iraqi military and government are not failing for lack of numbers, funds, training or equipment. They’re failing for lack of will. We handed them democracy on a silver platter, and they didn’t want it.
Our main concern in Iraq today is the 20,000 American civilians who are still there. They are vulnerable, and we should do everything possible to bring them home quickly and safely. No one wants to see the YouTube video of black-masked, machete-wielding Al Qaeda terrorists ready to strike at blindfolded, kneeling Americans.
What we have failed to understand throughout our wars of intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan is that we see war and peace through a different lens than our enemies do. Americans see peace as the normal state of affairs, with war occurring when peace breaks down. When war does break out, we believe it is temporary and that peace will be restored when it is over. We believe in wars that have winners and losers and, perhaps most importantly, that every war eventually ends.
The people we have been fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq do not see war and peace the same way. For them, war is never over. Peace is merely a pause while both sides regroup to fight again.
Some of our brave men and women who bore the brunt of battle in Iraq are now questioning whether their sacrifices were in vain. What they must remember is they weren’t fighting for Iraq, or for its various tribes. Our soldiers and sailors and marines and pilots fought for America. They fought nobly, and bravely. If there is any failure, it is not with America’s military, but with our political leaders.
I was a young National Security Council staffer working in the West Basement of the White House the night we evacuated the last American forces from Vietnam. My colleagues and I pledged that we would never again see Americans fight and die in a war we couldn’t win, in an effort to impose Western democracy on a country halfway around the world that didn’t want it.
But America made many of the same mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan that it did in Vietnam. Americans are once again war-weary, and once again determined not to send our troops to fight for dictators who don’t like us in countries that don’t matter. Hopefully the lesson sticks this time.
Just because there is no U.S. military solution for Iraq isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card for President Obama to do nothing. All too often he sets up the straw man argument: We don’t want to go to war, so therefore we do nothing.
The United States has vital strategic interests in the region – oil, terrorists and Israel – that will not be met if the president uses the excuse of no boots on the ground to do nothing. Lobbing a few missiles into Iraq or bombing a few areas may look like “action,” but neither will do anything to change the battle’s outcome. America’s national security does not always mean sending in the Marines, but it does mean taking concrete steps to guarantee our vital interests.
If the president fails to do so, he cannot hide behind the excuse that Iraq was Bush’s war, and losing it was Bush’s failure. If he fails to take the steps available to him to develop American energy resources, to protect Americans from terrorist attacks and to offer full support to our ally Israel, it will be on his watch, and on his head.
Kathleen Troia "K.T." McFarland is a Fox News National Security Analyst and host of FoxNews.com's "DefCon 3." She served in national security posts in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations. She was an aide to Dr. Henry Kissinger at the White House, and in 1984 Ms. McFarland wrote Secretary of Defense Weinberger's groundbreaking "Principles of War " speech. She received the Defense Department's highest civilian award for her work in the Reagan administration.
2b) Middle East Meltdown -- Just Blame Bush!
Debating "Bush Derangement Syndrome"
By Mark Alexander ·
"I will not believe our labors are lost. I shall not die without a hope that light and liberty are on a steady advance." --Thomas Jefferson (1821)
Last weekend, in violation of my longstanding debate rule, "Don't Swap Spit with a Jackass" (or any Democratic Party mascot), I deliberately ventured into a dispute with someone suffering from "Bush Derangement Syndrome," a recurring condition which psychiatrist-turned-columnist Charles Krauthammer first diagnosed back in 2003: "The acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency -- nay -- the very existence of George W. Bush."
I entered this contest in order to explore "liberal logic" (oxymoron, I know) regarding the current meltdown in Iraq, and the result was an insight into how the liberal proletariat is framing that fiasco.
My rebuttals are outlined below, but first, let's review this meltdown, the latest example of acute foreign policy malfeasance directly attributable to the worldwide leadership vacuum engineered by Barack Hussein Obama, as a catalyst for that debate.
In a few short years, BO has "fundamentally transformed" our nation's standing as the world's solitary super power -- a beacon of Liberty -- into the world's largest paper tiger. That transformation and its consequences are so tragically absurd as to be surreal.
After major meltdowns in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Jordan, etc., Iraq is now in chaos -- under attack by Sunni al-Qa'ida terrorists under the banner of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a.k.a. the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). ISIL is headed by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was arrested by U.S. troops in 2005 and held at a U.S. facility, Camp Bucca, until 2009 when the Obama administration ordered his release to the Iraqis.
According to Army Col. Kenneth King, commander of Camp Bucca, on his way out of the detention facility, al-Baghdadi said, "I'll see you guys in New York," a reference to 9/11and the next Jihadi attack on the U.S. homeland. Shortly thereafter, al-Baghdadi's Sunni hosts in Iraq released him.
Two years later, the U.S. State Department listed al-Baghdadi as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist with a reward of $10 million on his head. Only Ayman al-Zawahiri, now the CEO of al-Qa'ida, has a higher bounty on his head. And now, al-Baghdadi is the leader of ISIL. (Surely the "Taliban Five" Obama traded for Army deserter PFC Bowe Bergdahl three weeks ago won't revert to their old ways...)
What does the ISIL seek? They are on a crusade to establish a caliphate, Jihadistan, if you will, a borderless nation of Islamists comprising the Levant (Syria, Cyprus, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and southern Turkey) combined with Iraq -- roughly corresponding to the borders of ancient Mesopotamia before the British and French carved up the Middle East after World War I.
To that end, the ISIL has rapidly retaken large areas of Iraq on its way to Baghdad, which will not fall as swiftly as Fallujah, Baiji, Mosul and Tikrit.
In December 2011, a triumphant Obama declared Operation Iraqi Freedom a success and withdrew U.S. forces having failed to negotiate a status-of-forces agreement. Celebrating the "end" of the war, Obama shook hands with Iraq's Sunni-hating ShiitePrime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, describing him as "the elected leader of a sovereign, self-reliant and democratic Iraq," and then declared, with all the confidence of anerstwhile community organizer, "In the coming years Iraq's economy will grow even faster than China's or India's. We're building a new partnership between our nations and we are ending a war not with a final battle but with a final march toward home."
With a final pat on his own back, Obama concluded, "This is an extraordinary achievement."
A year later, the retreat from Iraq provided Obama this 2012 re-election mantra: "Four years ago, I promised to end the war in Iraq. We did. I promised to refocus on the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11. And we have."
Of Obama's actions in Iraq, commentator Brit Hume observed, "Obama has an interesting view on wars and how they end. Most presidents bring troops home when the war's over. Obama thinks he can end wars by bringing troops home. In fact Obama seems to think leaving is winning..."
Predictably, what Obama failed to comprehend in 2011 was that Iraq's "sovereign, stable and self-reliant" state was due in large measure to our remnant military presence there, and according to Professor Fouad Ajami, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of "The Syrian Rebellion," Obama and Maliki sealed Iraq's fate with that handshake. "The failure to successfully negotiate a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that would have maintained an adequate U.S. military presence in Iraq -- has resulted in the current descent into sectarian civil war."
In 2008, when George W. Bush negotiated the first SOFA with Maliki, it was understood that additional negotiations would ensure a sufficient military presence in Iraq to maintain stability, and, most notably, to provide the U.S. with a forward operating capability on friendly turf in the region.
Notably, in the 2008 presidential campaign, John McCain was asked about possibly having a military presence in Iraq in 50 years. In response, he said, "Make it a hundred." He was pilloried, but he was correct. We should have maintained a strong forward operating capability in Iraq to ensure our vital national security interests in the region. Had we done so, Iraq would look today much as it did in 2011 when we departed, and Iraqi combat veterans, and the families of those who did not return, would not have to witness the undoing of all their sacrifice.
However, Obama embraced the 2008 SOFA "as is," and earlier this week, while our strategic gains in Iraq were suffering violent erosion, he took some time off from his Palm Springs golfing junket to declare, "We're not going to allow ourselves to be dragged back into a situation in which, while we're there, we're keeping a lid on things, and after enormous sacrifices by us, as soon as we're not there, suddenly people end up acting in ways that are not conducive to the long-term stability and prosperity of the country."
Surely Obama understands that "keeping a lid on things" is precisely why the U.S. has maintained armed forces around the world -- or maybe not.
And now, Obama wants to partner with Iran, the planet's leading sponsor of terrorism, to "collaboratively de-escalate the ongoing crisis in Iraq," according to John Kerry?
Of course, Obama's sycophantic supporters refuse to accept that his tragic miscalculation in Iraq is responsible for the situation there now, most opting instead to blame George W. Bush. So, what follows is how that blame-shifting to Bush plays out, complete with reality-check rebuttals.
In a group debate about the meltdown in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East, a liberal female (let's call her "Libby") offered this prototypical explanation.
Libby: "Didn't this sh-t start with Bush? He is responsible for the mess in Iraq."
Me: No, it started centuries ago, but our operations there are a direct result of an al-Qa'ida cell of terrorist who moved into U.S. suburbs in 1998, and a few years later on 9-11-2001, attacked our nation. Bill Clinton had refused to authorize SpecOps to pull the trigger on their leader, Sheik Osama bin Laden -- TWICE -- when our shooters had him in their sights. Clinton also refused to allow the FBI to open a case file, at the request of a female agent in Michigan, on a group of Islamic men who were taking flight lessons -- the administration objecting to that investigation on concern for "religious sensitivity" and "profiling." The agent was concerned about the fact these Islamic men were taking instruction only on flying heavies, not take off and landing them.
Libby: "And these terrorists were from Iraq?"
Me: Actually, yes, in the sense that they were from Jihadistan, a borderless nation of Islamic extremists constituted by al-Qa'ida and other Islamist terrorist groups worldwide.
The "Islamic World" of the Q'uran recognizes no political borders. Though the "pre-Medina" suras of the Q'uran do not support acts of terrorism or mass murder, the "post-Mecca" suras of the Q'uran and the Hadith (Mohammed's teachings) authorizes jihad, or "holy war," against all "the enemies of God" (Read: "Infidels") All orthodox Muslims are bound by the combined "pre-Medina" and "post-Mecca" Q'uran.
Libby: "Well what about Bush's 'Mission Accomplished' claim? We should have gotten out of Iraq then."
Me: After Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti was deposed, Bush43 held a briefing on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, but he did not say "Mission Accomplished." Those words were on a banner strung from the carrier island, in reference to what Bush did say -- that "major combat operations" were complete, which, given the insurgent resurgence in the years which followed, would prove to be an overstatement. But the best military plans are obsolete after the first shots are fired.
Libby: "My point is that this could have been avoided had Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld not been so eager to go into Iraq on the basis of lies regarding weapons of mass destruction, and oil and Halliburton contracts. The reason we went into Iraq was to find and destroy WMD. None were found. It wasn't worth over 4,000 lives and $1 trillion. So, given Bush created this mess, what do you think should be done about it?
Me: Have you fully analyzed and calculated the consequences had we NOT launched Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom? I think not because history does not disclose such alternatives. After 9/11, we had to hold the line in Iraq, If not, then where, when and at what cost?
As for "lies regarding weapons of mass destruction," George W. Bush noted, "While it is perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began," a reference to the fact thateveryone across the political spectrum concluded Iraq had WMD, until it becamepolitically expedient to cut and run, given the advantage of 20/20 hindsight. For the record, both Hillary Clinton and John Kerry voted to launch OIF.
And when you note, "None were found," I assume you are referring to nukes only -- not Bio or Chem -- and that you dispute the NRO and CIA assessment that components of the former and the bulk of the latter went into Syria prior to the invasion?
Libby: "What assessment? What are you talking about?"
Me: Recall if you will that in 2003, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and then director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, confirmed that while the UN stalled through 17 resolutions U.S. surveillance satellites captured images of endless convoys of trucks from known weapons facilities moving material into Syria.
"Those below the senior leadership saw what was coming, and I think they went to extraordinary lengths to [dispose, destroy and disperse] the evidence," said Gen. Clapper. "By the time that we got to a lot of these facilities ... there wasn't that much there to look at. There was clearly an effort to disperse, bury and conceal certain equipment prior to inspections," and there's "no question" that truck convoys moved WMD materiel into Syria.
This would be the same Gen. Clapper appointed by Obama as Director of National Intelligence, who was asked last month by Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), "How would you characterize the probability of an al-Qa'ida-sponsored or inspired attack against the U.S. homeland today, as compared to 2001?" Gen. Clapper replied, "Al-Qa'ida is morphing and franchising itself. This is very, very worrisome. [They] have aspirations for attacks on the [U.S.] homeland."
Libby: "So how long do you think we should keep troops on the ground in Iraq, and at what human cost?"
Me: I believe, as John McCain asserted in 2008, that we should have maintained a forward operating capability in Iraq for "one-hundred years"! I can explain to you later what is meant by "forward operating capability" in the region, but suffice it to say we should anticipate a long-war strategy against Jihadistan, and keep the battle on their turf in order to avoid another catastrophic attack on our homeland.
We did NOT invade Iraq to dethrone Saddam or give "democracy" to the Iraqi people. We invaded Iraq to prevent it from becoming the primary broker for asymmetric warfare against the Untied States. Taking out Saddam and bringing some stability to Iraq and the region was the way to achieve the latter.
In response to your question about the human cost of such operations, let me answer by quoting 19th-century libertarian philosopher John Stuart Mill: "War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. A man who has nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance at being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
Libby: "So what would you do now?"
Me: Iraq is not lost. I would provide what we should have left in place -- sufficient special operations capabilities and advisers to "keep a lid on things," and intelligence and air power capabilities to back them up. It is no small irony that the carrier we've deployed to the Persian Gulf is the USS George HW Bush. Had we marched to Baghdad in Desert Storm, and done then what it took us a lot of blood and treasure to accomplish in Iraq after 9/11, the world might be a very different place.
Libby: "This is a very complicated issue with several competing variables and each one of our administrations have made very difficult decisions. Some not so great, some downright idiotic and foolish, and some maybe pretty good. I will always hate war and its cost."
Me: On the subject of "hating war," we can agree, but there are opinions and there are facts, and too often liberals are predisposed to let their opinion trump the facts, especially in the case of deeply convicted devotion to political ideologies.
A final note on how liberals frame U.S. involvement in warfare. One reporter asked "Hanoi Jane" Fonda about parallels between Vietnam and Iraq: "What do you think about the 3 million Vietnamese and Cambodians who died after the U.S. left Vietnam?" Fonda replied, "It's too bad that we caused that to happen by going in there in the first place."
I'm surprised she didn't blame Bush!
3) Abbas defends PA search for kidnapped teens;
blames kidnappers for damaging PA;
criticizes Israel for "havoc and destruction"
Mahmoud Abbas:
"They are, first and foremost, human beings,
and we want to protect human lives"
"Whoever committed this act wants to destroy us"
Netanyahu "has found a suitable opportunity to use violence against us, to destroy everything and wreak havoc and destruction"
PA Security Forces on Facebook:
"May Allah curse the corrupt people [Jews],
the enemies of Islam"
Official PA daily:
Perhaps "Israel itself is behind the 'kidnapping'"
by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
In a speech in Saudi Arabia, Palestinian Authority Chairman Abbas defended the PA's cooperation with Israel in the search for the three kidnapped Israeli youths who have been missing since last Thursday. Abbas said:
"We are [working] in coordination with them in order to find these boys, because they are, first and foremost, human beings, and we want to protect human lives...for us he is a human being and we must look for this human being and return him to his family."
[Official PA TV, June 18, 2014]
However, Abbas also accused Israel of "causing a sharp escalation" and exploiting the kidnapping to damage the Palestinian infrastructure:
"Prime Minister [Netanyahu] has found a suitable opportunity to use violence against us, to destroy everything and wreak havoc and destruction throughout the land."
Abbas also complained that "the act" was harmful to the PA:
"The truth is that whoever committed this act (the kidnapping) wants to destroy us... Because we cannot endure such actions; we cannot confront the State of Israel - neither militarily nor in any other way."
The official PA daily even suggested that Israel is behind the kidnapping:
"International, regional and local forces do not rule out the scenario that Israel itself is behind the 'kidnapping,'..." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, June 17, 2014]
"Is the disappearance of the settlers in Hebron merely an Israeli politicaltrap, meant to justify its punitive measures against the citizens?" the paper asked. It further speculated that the kidnapping might be "a deliberate act on the part of Israel meant to achieve the goal" of weakening the PA.
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, June 18, 2014]
Abbas' PA Security Forces posted a cartoon on Facebook with the same message - that Israel is "wreaking havoc on the land"
[Facebook page of the Palestinian National Security Forces, June 16, 2014]
Numerous Antisemitic comments were added to the cartoon, which the administrator reinforced:
Comment: "Allah's curse upon you, Israel. God, you are great, very great. Punish these dogs, God."
Page administrator's response: "If the Jews have a wind surely the [Palestinian] revolution is a storm. Allah willing, respected sister, the day will come when the truth will be revealed and the oppressed will defeat the oppressor."
Comment: "Allah's curse upon the Jews."
Page administrator's response: "May Allah curse the corrupt people, the enemies of Islam. Allah willing, a day will come when they will retreat and victory will be ours, Allah willing, for this is God's promise to us."
Comment: "May Allah burn them and give you victory, dear Palestinian people."
Page administrator's response: "Amen, God. We thank you for contacting us, dear brothers."
Abbas' Fatah movement posted yet another cartoon saying Netanyahu is not concerned with finding the three missing boys, but only in causing suffering for the people of Hebron. The cartoon showed Netanyahu in a hospital bed, and a doctor with a syringe.
Text on cartoon:"Netanyahu's condition after the capture of the Zionist soldiers in Hebron."
Doctor: "What's bothering you?"
Netanyahu: "The residents of Hebron."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4) Immigration Reform Can't Wait
There is rarely a good time to do hard things, and America won't advance if legislators act like seat-warmers.
When I learned that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor had lost his Republican primary, my heart sank. Not simply because I think he is an intelligent and talented member of Congress, or because I worry about the future of the Republican Party.
Like others who want comprehensive immigration reform, I worried that Mr. Cantor's loss would be misconstrued and make Congress reluctant to tackle this urgent need. That would be the wrong lesson and an undesirable national consequence of this single, local election result.
People are looking for leadership—those who stand for something and offer a vision for how to take America forward and keep our nation economically competitive. One of the most immediate ways to revitalize our economy is by passing immigration reform.
Newly naturalized U.S. citizens celebrate after taking the oath of citizenship in Washington, D.C., June 17.Getty Images
I chose to come to America and become a citizen because America was—and remains—the most free and entrepreneurial nation in the world. Our history is defined by people whose character and culture have been shaped by ambition, imagination and hard work, bound together by a dream of a better life.
Is the idea of immigration reform complicated by the fact that some immigrants went outside the legal system to be here? Yes. It is complicated even more by the fear some Americans have, quite naturally, of how changing populations might also change our culture, communities and economic circumstances.
Well, of course immigration means change. Immigrants enrich our culture and add to our economic prosperity.
You don't have to take one immigrant's word for it. The Partnership for a New American Economy, a bipartisan group of political and business leaders, reports that people who moved here from abroad or their children founded more than 40% of America's FortuneFT.T -1.61% 500 companies—businesses that collectively employ millions of people.
Do Americans really wish Google, GOOGL -0.18% eBay, EBAY -0.12% PfizerPFE -0.53% or Home Depot HD -0.72% were headquartered in Eastern Europe or China instead of America? Whether it's a high-profile tech company or a small business employing just 10 people, 28% of all new American businesses started in 2011 were founded by immigrants. Those are entrepreneurial people we want to continue to attract to our economy.
I don't believe that people come to America to sit on their hands. The vast majority of America's immigrants are hardworking, family-minded individuals with strong values. They are drawn here from many different places by a common belief that this is still the land of opportunity for those willing to work hard.
We need to give those individuals who are already here—after they have passed checks to ensure they are not dangerous criminals—a path to citizenship so they can pay their full taxes, be counted, and become more productive members of our community.
Next, we need to do away with the cap on H-1B visas, which is arbitrary and results in U.S. companies struggling to find the high-skill workers they need to continue growing. We already know that most of the applications for these visas are for computer programmers and engineers, where there is a shortage of qualified American candidates. But we are held back by the objections of the richly funded labor unions that mistakenly believe that if we keep innovation out of America, somehow nothing will change. They are wrong, and frankly as much to blame for our stalemate on this issue as nativists who scream about amnesty.
If we are serious about advancing our economic future and about creating job growth here in America, then we must realize that it is suicidal to suggest closing our doors to the world's entrepreneurs, or worse, to continue with large-scale deportations.
That is not to suggest we don't need to do a far better job securing our border. Border security should be an integral part of a comprehensive solution, and we should not dismiss the concerns of states that are struggling to deal with the consequences of ongoing illegal immigration.
Some politicians and pundits will argue that this is not the time to bring immigration reform to the congressional floor—that it will frighten an already anxious workforce and encourage more extreme candidates, especially on the right. They may be right about the short-term politics, but they are dead wrong about the long-term interests of our country.
Maybe, as someone who came here as an immigrant, I have more faith in the compassion and fortitude of the American people, and in their ability to reject extreme views on either side of the political spectrum. Or maybe, as a businessman, I have learned that there is rarely a good time to do the hard things.
That is why I was pleased to see Sen. Rand Paul and Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, step up their efforts to lobby for immigration reform.
President Obama has shown wise restraint despite pressure from the left to act, recognizing that a bipartisan approach on such an immense issue would be best. Remember ObamaCare?
However, if Congress fails to even try to have this important debate, the president might feel tempted to act via executive order. I hope it doesn't get to that point, given the furious political firestorm that would result.
All the more reason, then, to recognize that the facts are on the side of reform, and democratic societies don't advance when our elected officials act like seat-warmers.
Mr. Murdoch is executive chairman of News Corp, which owns The Wall Street Journal
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5) Why People Zone Out on Hillary
By Roger L..Simon
Hillary Clinton — the woman assumed to be the next Democratic Party presidential nominee and quite possibly the next president — is evidently a big snooze. According to Mediate, her interviews to promote her book on CNN and Fox had underwhelming numbers. In the case of Greta Van Susteren’s show, she sent people fleeing midway. More importantly, her book itself is a sales disappointment and, I would wager, even more disappointing if you could ascertain how many who did buy it read actually past page 15. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was in single digits.
Which leads me to the deeper reason the country is sleeping through Hillary’s book and it’s not just because it’s hugely over long and therefore a totally un-green waste of paper and trees (although that’s true). Most people know she’s basically dishonest, a prevaricator. Even liberals, though they won’t readily admit it, know this. Who can forget her blaming her husband’s compulsive philandering on the “great, right-wing conspiracy”? If they only had such power. Or the dim-witted claims of being under fire when she hadn’t been (at least Geraldo makes a show of ducking) and, more recently, the banshee-cry of “What difference does it make?” concerning the deaths of our people in Benghazi? The Benghazi lies are actually exponential. (I’m not even going to go back to Whitewater, the miracle quick killing on the stock market, the mysterious Rose Law Firm bill and all the rest.)No, I haven’t read it and don’t intend to. Almost all books by contemporary politicians are intellectually vacuous, ghostwritten exercises in self-promotion or, as in the case of Barack Obama, a straight out pack of lies. Who would spend their valuable reading time on that with the thousands of great books, past and present, available? I haven’t even made my way through half of Dorothy Sayers.
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5) Why People Zone Out on Hillary
By Roger L..Simon
Hillary Clinton — the woman assumed to be the next Democratic Party presidential nominee and quite possibly the next president — is evidently a big snooze. According to Mediate, her interviews to promote her book on CNN and Fox had underwhelming numbers. In the case of Greta Van Susteren’s show, she sent people fleeing midway. More importantly, her book itself is a sales disappointment and, I would wager, even more disappointing if you could ascertain how many who did buy it read actually past page 15. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was in single digits.
Which leads me to the deeper reason the country is sleeping through Hillary’s book and it’s not just because it’s hugely over long and therefore a totally un-green waste of paper and trees (although that’s true). Most people know she’s basically dishonest, a prevaricator. Even liberals, though they won’t readily admit it, know this. Who can forget her blaming her husband’s compulsive philandering on the “great, right-wing conspiracy”? If they only had such power. Or the dim-witted claims of being under fire when she hadn’t been (at least Geraldo makes a show of ducking) and, more recently, the banshee-cry of “What difference does it make?” concerning the deaths of our people in Benghazi? The Benghazi lies are actually exponential. (I’m not even going to go back to Whitewater, the miracle quick killing on the stock market, the mysterious Rose Law Firm bill and all the rest.)No, I haven’t read it and don’t intend to. Almost all books by contemporary politicians are intellectually vacuous, ghostwritten exercises in self-promotion or, as in the case of Barack Obama, a straight out pack of lies. Who would spend their valuable reading time on that with the thousands of great books, past and present, available? I haven’t even made my way through half of Dorothy Sayers.
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