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Blake has become a very active young man. Everything goes in the mouth these days.
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Then there is Hillary and her mouth which seems to always get her in trouble.
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===President Obama says:“Better than Visa, MC or American Express.”I use it proudly and I use it often!
"I love my Race Card. It comes in handy whenever I find myself in some mess I've made. I just bring it out and the mess is overlooked. In fact, there's no limit on how many times I can use it. I highly recommend the Race Card. Don't leave home without it."(Also endorsed by Al Sharpton, Jessie Jackson and Eric Holder)
Kissinger gives advice to Israel. (See 1 below.)
Dempsey dissed by his Boss? (See 1a below.)
I am getting reports that E.U. aid to Gaza is being hijacked by Hamas. Trying to confirm. Would not surprise me.
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Obama's economic legacy - part time work and full time living expenses.
Over 7 million stuck in jobs they would leave if they could.
You can partly blame the penalties levied by Obamacare. (See 2 below.)
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Though Obama has options which could stop Iran's nuclear March, he is unlikely to use them! (See 3,3a and 3b below.)
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Democrats have been shooting themselves in their feet and cannot blame Obama for supplying all the bullets. (See 4 below.)
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Is a spreading war with terrorists about to hit Egypt? (See 5 below.)
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I have been told Jeb will run and Hillary will not because of health issues.
Is the recent increased visibility of JEB's brother an orchestrated effort to prepare the nation for another Bush? GW looks better and better against Obama.
Could Dr. Carson be the Republican's next VP? Would Republicans nominate JEB? Time will tell.
Stop and think about the variety of excellent candidates Republicans have ( Jeb, Carson, Cruz, Walker, Rand etc.) and Democrats are stuck between Hillary and Warren.(See 6, 6a and 6b below.)
If you want more discord then the nation will elect Hillary and have 4 to 8 more years of Obama type tension and angst.
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Dick
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1) Kissinger: Israel Should Not Seek Final Peace Deal With Palestinians Until MidEast Chaos Subsides
Respected statesman and former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger told a New York audience on Tuesday that considering the widespread upheaval in the Middle East, it is a mistake for Israel to pursue a comprehensive peace deal with the Palestinians.
After describing the regional turmoil, Kissinger advised against seeking a “permanent settlement” until “the fundamental issues that I described here move to some resolution.”
The renowned diplomat said “the overall solutions will have to be discussed within the context of a solution of the various upheavals and the settling down of these upheavals.”
In the meantime, he counseled, Israel should “make contributions by the understanding it shows for the psychological and historical problems of the people with which it lives in the same territory. But things cannot be accomplished in a final manner in a single negotiation.”
Kissinger’s comments were made before a crowd of 500 at the Waldorf Astoria as he received the Theodor Herzl Award from the World Jewish Congress (WJC). Other attendees at the black-tie gala included Barbara Walters who presented the honor, WJC Chairman Ronald Lauder, Ralph Lauren and Google’s Eric Schmidt.
Kissinger also outlined his assessment of the foreign policy landscape and had words of advice for the leaders of the United States. He spoke as an American but with sympathy and reverence for the Jewish state. Speaking at a time in which U.S.-Israel ties have seen significant strain, Kissinger continuously stressed the fundamental importance of the relationship.
“In the years ahead,” he said, “there are a number of principles that the United States has to keep in mind. What it will defend or seek to achieve even if it has to do so alone. What it has to achieve only together with others, and finally, what is beyond its capacity.
“The survival of Israel and the maintenance of its capacity to build the future is one of those principles that we will pursue even if we have to do so alone.”
“It is crucial for the United States to develop a conception of the future that we can sustain over a long period of time,” he said. “And part of that consensus must be a realization that Israel is, has been, a representative of the principles in which America believes. It is the one country on whose geopolitical support America can always count.”
Describing the singular standard to which Israel is held in international diplomacy, Kissinger said, “It is in the unique position that for every other country, the recognition of its existence is taken for granted as the basis of diplomacy. Israel is asked to pay a different price before it is recognized and participates in the international system.”
Addressing the recent resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe and around the world, Kissinger said the award came “at moment of enormous upheaval in the world. A period in which many of the institutions with which we have been familiar are under attack and in which the Jewish people have again become, in some countries, the object of severe attacks.”
Referring to his journey as a refugee escaping the Holocaust in Germany as a teen, he lamented “what can happen to societies when they take a wrong turn, and the disaster that can happen to the Jewish people under those conditions.”
“In America we have come to think that peace is something that can be contracted in a single effort…” he concluded. “The fact is that we are engaged now in a process without end, but a process which needs our convictions and our commitments and in which the friendship between Israel and the United States is an essential element.”
1a) State and White House contradict Gen. Dempsey on Gaza
1a) State and White House contradict Gen. Dempsey on Gaza
When Israel launched Operation Protective Edge to stop the flood of rockets being launched at its cities, and particularly when it mounted a short ground operation to locate and destroy infiltration tunnels under the border, there was the predictable response from the UN, the NGOs and Israel’s usual critics that it was causing ‘disproportionate’ civilian casualties in Gaza. Surprisingly (or not), the Obama Administration and State Department joined the chorus.
You probably recall John Kerry’s sarcastic remark that Israel had carried out a “hell of a pinpoint operation.” And you may remember that back in July, State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki said that “there’s more that could be done [by Israel]” to reduce civilian casualties. There are also reports of a particularly ‘combative’ phone call from President Obama to PM Netanyahu during the war.
All along, Col. Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, was saying that as a matter of fact, the IDF was doing an unprecedentedly good job in protecting Gaza civilians, even to the point of limiting its effectiveness against Hamas fighters:
Israel’s ratio of civilian to military casualties in Operation Protective Edge was only one-fourth of the average in warfare around the world, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan Col. (res.) Richard Kemp told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee [on Sept. 3, 2014].
Kemp pointed out that, during the operation, there was approximately one civilian casualty for ever terrorist killed by the IDF, whereas the average in the world is four civilians for every combatant, and that, when taking into consideration Hamas’s use of human shields, this shows how careful the IDF is.
“No army in the world acts with as much discretion and great care as the IDF in order to minimize damage. The US and the UK are careful, but not as much as Israel,” he told the committee.
On Thursday, General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, added his endorsement of the IDF’s attempt to limit civilian casualties in Gaza:
I actually do think that Israel went to extraordinary lengths to limit collateral damage and civilian casualties. In fact, about 3 months ago we sent, we asked [IDF Chief of Staff] Benny [Gantz] if we could send a lessons learned team – one of the things we do better than anybody I think is learn – and we sent a team of senior officers and non-commissioned officers over to work with the IDF to get the lessons from that particular operation in Gaza. To include the measures they took to prevent civilian casualties and what they did with tunneling, because Hamas had become very nearly a subterranean society. And so, that caused the IDF some significant challenges. But they did some extraordinary things to try to limit civilian casualties to include calling out, making it known that they were going to destroy a particular structure. Even developed some techniques, they call it roof knocking, to have something knock on the roof, they would display leaflets to warn citizens and population to move away from where these tunnels. But look in this kind of conflict, where you are held to a standard that your enemy is not held to, you’re going to be criticized for civilian casualties. So I think if Benny were sitting here right now he would say to you we did everything we could and now we’ve learned from that mission and we think there are some other things we could do in the future and we will do those. The IDF is not interested in creating civilian casualties they’re interested in stopping the shooting of rockets and missiles, out of the Gaza Strip and in to Israel, and its an incredibly difficult environment, and I can say to you with confidence that I think that … they acted responsible.
These are military men with experience in urban warfare, and I think that if anyone can be called ‘experts’, they are the ones. With all due respect, I think their judgment on this subject is better than that of Ms. Psaki, Secretary Kerry and President Obama.
So yesterday, the intrepid Matt Lee of the AP asked Psaki whether the Chairman of the JCS knew what he was talking about:
QUESTION: Yesterday, the ICC made its decision that there was no case to prosecute for war crimes in Gaza. But also yesterday – and you spoke about that very briefly here. But also yesterday, General Dempsey, who is no slouch when it comes to military things, told an audience in New York that the Israelis went to extraordinary lengths to limit collateral damage during the Gaza war.
And I’m puzzled, because I thought it was the position of the Administration – or maybe it was just the position of the State Department and the White House – that Israel was not doing enough to live up to its – what you called its own high standards. Back on August 3rd, there was the statement you put out after the UNRWA school incident, saying that the U.S. “is appalled by today’s disgraceful shelling.” And that was some pretty fierce criticism.
How do you reconcile these two apparent divergent points of view? When this statement came out, the United States was appalled? Did that just mean the State Department was appalled?
MS. PSAKI: No, that is the position of the Administration; it remains the position of the Administration. As we made clear throughout the summer’s conflict, we supported Israel’s right to self-defense and strongly condemned Hamas’s rocket attacks that deliberately targeted civilians, and the use of tunnels, of course, of attacks into Israel. However, we also expressed deep concern and heartbreak for the civilian death toll in Gaza and made clear, as you noted in the statement you pointed to, that we believed that Israel could have done more to prevent civilian casualties, and it was important that they held their selves to a high standard. So that remains our view and position about this summer’s events.
QUESTION: Okay. But I’m still confused as to how you can reconcile the fact that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – who knows a bit about how military operations work, I would venture to guess; I don’t know him, but I assume that he wouldn’t be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff if he was – if he didn’t —
MS. PSAKI: Correct.
QUESTION: — says that the Israelis essentially did the best that they could and lived up to – by extension lived up to their high standards by taking – by going to, quote, “extraordinary lengths” to limit the collateral damage.
MS. PSAKI: Well, I would point you to the chairman’s team for his – more specifics on his comments. But it remains the broad view of the entire Administration that they could have done more and they should have taken more – all feasible precautions to prevent civilian casualties.
Apparently they don’t think much of Gen. Dempsey’s expertise. Or they don’t care.
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2) Elevated Level of Part-Time Employment: Post-Recession Norm?
Martina Morgan is deciding which bills to skip after her hours fell at Ikea in Renton, Wash. Sandra Sok says she’s been unable to consistently get full-time hours after she transferred to a Wal-Mart in Arizona from one in Colorado.
The situation of these so-called involuntary part-time workers—those who would prefer to work more than 34 hours a week—has economists puzzling over whether a higher level of part-time employment might be a permanent legacy of the great recession. If so, it could force more workers to choose between underemployment or working multiple jobs to make ends meet, leading to less income growth and weaker discretionary spending.
Employers added some 3.3 million full-time workers over the past year, but the number of full-time workers in the U.S. is still around 2 million shy of the level before the recession began in 2007. Meanwhile, the ranks of workers who are part time for economic reasons has fallen by 740,000 this year to around 4.5% of the civilian workforce. That is down from a high of 5.9% in 2010 but remains well above the 2.7% average in the decade preceding the recession.
“There’s just less full-time jobs available than there used to be,” said Michelle Girard, chief economist at RBS Securities Inc.
Other data show that the ability of part-time service workers to find full-time work has been much slower during the current recovery. In goods-producing industries, around two-thirds of involuntary part-time workers in July 2013 had found full-time employment by July 2014, up from 60% in 2009, according to a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. But for service-sector workers, the rate has seen little improvement. Around 48% of involuntary part-time workers in July 2013 had found full-time work one year later, up from around 46% in 2009.The slow decline in part-time work is particularly acute when broken out by industries. For the retail and hospitality sectors, the number of involuntary part-time workers in October was nearly double its prerecession level. For construction, mining and manufacturing work, by contrast, the share of such part-time labor was just 9% above its pre-recession level.
An important question for policy makers now is whether the elevated level of involuntary part-time work is due to cyclical factors, meaning it will fall as the economy heals, or to structural changes that have made employers more inclined to rely on a larger contingent workforce and avoid converting part-time workers to full-time positions.
The health-care law requires employers with 50 or more full-time equivalent workers to offer affordable insurance to employees working 30 or more hours a week or face fines. “Companies are just more inclined to hire part-time workers, not necessarily because of the health-care law, but for business reasons that make it a more attractive option,” Ms. Girard said.
Anecdotal reports have suggested employers have cut hours to prepare for the implementation of the health-care law, but that hasn’t been borne out by economic data.
An analysis by Bowen Garrett of the Urban Institute and Robert Kaestner at the University of Illinois at Chicago found a small increase in part-time work this year, but the increase occurred for part-time jobs with between 30 and 34 hours—above the 30-hour threshold that would be affected by the health-care law.
Other economists say higher levels of involuntary part-time work are mostly cyclical. Businesses don’t appear to be paying part-time workers more than full-time workers; that would be one clear sign of a shift in hiring preferences.
Part-time work in service jobs is “a stepping stone for the unemployed and for people out of the labor force,” said Adam Ozimek, an economist at Moody’s Analytics. Labor markets are “improving in just the way you would expect.”
Ms. Morgan, the Ikea worker, has held two jobs simultaneously in the past and she isn’t interested in doing that again. The single mother of two, who works in the furniture store’s cafe and receives health benefits, has seen her hours drop to 20 per week from around 35 earlier this year.
“I need to spend some time with my kids,” said Ms. Morgan, 32. “Two jobs? It’s too much.”
Meanwhile, the structural-cyclical debate has important implications for the Federal Reserve. If the changes are structural, wages might begin to rise sooner than expected, putting more pressure on the Fed to raise interest rates. If they’re cyclical, it would suggest that Fed policy can remain accommodative.
Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen routinely highlights the elevated level of part-time work as a key measure of labor slack. “There are still ... too many who are working part-time but would prefer full-time work,” she said at a press conference in September.
Business surveys conducted by the Atlanta Fed have shown there are more part-time workers because “business conditions don’t justify converting them to full time,” said John Robertson, senior economist at the bank. But other businesses have said their reliance on a larger part-time workforce stemmed from the higher costs of hiring full-time workers.
“It would be wrong to say it’s all cyclical, and it would be wrong to say it’s all structural,” Mr. Robertson said. “We’re somewhere in the middle.”
Ulyses Coatl illustrates how any improvement might unfold. He worked for two years as a stylist at a Levi’s apparel store in lower Manhattan but quit his job in September because the hours had become too unpredictable. His schedule varied from as many as 34 hours a week to four hours, but had averaged around 18 hours in recent weeks, he said.
Mr. Coatl, 20, took a job working in construction this month that provides better pay and a 40-hour week. “It’s enough to support myself,” he said.
A Levi’s spokeswoman said the company is “always looking at ways to improve retail productivity, including store labor models and processes” that conform to “industry best practices.”
Ms. Sok gave up a full-time job she held for seven years at a Wal-Mart in Colorado this summer when she moved to Tolleson, Ariz., to help raise her daughter’s child. She transferred to a part-time cashier job at a different Wal-Mart. She says she’s been unable to consistently get full-time hours and is applying for a second part-time job at FedEx Corp.
Wal-Mart says the majority of its workforce is full time, and the share of part-time workers has stayed about the same over the past decade. A spokeswoman said store employees can view all of the open shifts in their store, and that there are full-time positions available in the store at which Ms. Sok works.
The deadline is approaching with dwindling hope for a deal in part because Iran has already gotten so much that it wants. During the 2012 negotiations leading to the interim deal, the White House accommodated Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei ’s red lines against reducing enrichment capacity and foreclosing an industrial-size program.
Iran thus got its wish to continue programs for uranium enrichment, long-range ballistic missiles and centrifuge development. Iran further refused to accept intrusive U.N. or other inspections, balked at dismantling the heavy-water reactor at Arak, and declined to discuss past weaponization research. It also won agreement that any restrictions on its nuclear program would be of limited duration. Tehran has treated the U.S. concessions to its demands as permanent—effectively making further diplomatic advances contingent on greater Western “flexibility.”
Washington keeps trying to tiptoe around Mr. Khamenei’s red lines. Take the recent American suggestion that Iran disconnect all “excess” centrifuges and cascade piping used in uranium enrichment at Iran’s Natanz facility—and retire around 14,000 first-generation machines into storage under United Nations safeguards. That plan is likely a nonstarter: Mr. Khamenei has adamantly opposed any reduction in enrichment capacity.
First: The White House could give up on diplomacy and pre-emptively strike Iran’s nuclear sites. Although this option could seriously, even terminally, damage Tehran’s nuclear program, it is highly unlikely. Mr. Obama is too cautious to do something so aggressive. His entire political agenda and moral philosophy on American disengagement from the Muslim Middle East would collapse after a bombing raid.
Second: The administration could give up on the current talks and default back to sanctions, but again trying to undercut their seriousness, as the president attempted to do in 2011 and 2012. Congress imposed the most economically painful measures—targeting Iran’s oil exports, central bank and access to the Swift interbank system—over his objections. The president has always hoped that “rationality” would take hold in Tehran, that the regime would see the economic benefits that come with good behavior. The Islamic Republic has enjoyed an economic reprieve, thanks to Mr. Obama’s decision last year to de-escalate sanctions pressure by blocking new congressional action and giving billions of dollars in direct sanctions relief as part of the interim deal.
We don’t know the Islamic Republic’s timeline for a bomb. The U.S. needs intelligence sources inside the upper reaches of Iran’s nuclear establishment to know how advanced the regime is with building triggering devices—and it is clear, from official discussions of past National Intelligence Estimates, that the Central Intelligence Agency hasn’t had such sources.
Through the International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspections, the U.S. has measured the regime’s advance in producing uranium and plutonium, which is technically the hardest and most expensive part of building weapons, and can calculate accordingly. Given these advances, new sanctions would have to hit like a tidal wave over the next year to bring greater Iranian flexibility and openness to renewed negotiations.
The wiser bet is that sanctions—though important in restoring the U.S.’s negotiating leverage—will fail without other forms of coercion. And Ayatollah Khamenei, if he isn’t otherwise deterred, may well respond to new, economy-crushing sanctions by accelerating the nuclear program, presenting Mr. Obama with the choice he most dreads: launch militarily strikes or accept Iran as a nuclear state.
Which brings us to option four: The White House could try to reinforce new sanctions with the credible show of military force to intimidate the Iranian regime. President Hasan Rouhani has rather pleadingly confessed in speeches and in his memoirs that the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003 scared the clerical regime and led him to advocate, as Tehran’s chief nuclear negotiator between 2003-05, a tactical pause in the regime’s nuclear aspirations.
To achieve a more lasting impression now would require a significant military operation. Only one target would serve that purpose: Bashar Assad. Syria is Iran’s most helpful ally among Arab states. Taking Mr. Assad down would let Tehran know that America’s withdrawal from the Middle East and President Obama’s dreams of an entente with Iran are over.
Taking out Mr. Assad is unavoidable if Washington is serious about stopping the radicalization of Syria’s Sunni population and getting their help in defeating the radical Islamic State, also known as ISIS. And such an about-face by Washington would be shocking—perhaps paralyzing—in Tehran. Yet it is hard to imagine Mr. Obama taking such action.
Which means that Washington and its European allies will most likely angle for another extension of the talks. Ayatollah Khamenei may accept. The Iranian economy, despite the oil-price drop, has been noticeably improving since the interim deal was concluded in January—and the continuation of the talks poses no threat to further nuclear progress.
It is doubtful, though, that things will remain static. Ayatollah Khamenei has no intention of “freezing” Iran’s nuclear advance. The weapons program has developed massively on his watch, and in his eyes it is probably essential for the survival of the revolution. Another one of the program’s founding fathers, President Rouhani—in whom the Obama administration has put so much hope—almost certainly agrees that retreat is not an option.
Mr. Gerecht, a former CIA Iranian-targets officer, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mr. Dubowitz is the foundation’s executive director and heads its Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance.
3a) OBAMA'S DANGEROUS RACE FOR AN IRAN DEAL
By Jonathan S. Tobin
With only two weeks to go before the deadline for the end of the current round of nuclear talks with Iran, the Obama administration has been conducting what can only be considered a full-court press aimed at producing a deal before November 24. This is in marked contrast to the relaxed attitude toward the previous deadline for the talks that passed in June and was extended to the fall. It also seems to contradict the behavior of Washington’s European negotiating partners who seemed to be reconciling themselves to yet another extension in the familiar pattern of stalling that has always characterized Iran’s conduct of the negotiations. But though the latest talks in Oman ended without agreement, the flurry of diplomatic action raises the question of whether President Obama believes he needs to get a deal done now before Republicans take control of the Senate in January.
2) Elevated Level of Part-Time Employment: Post-Recession Norm?
Economists Puzzle Over Trend’s Roots—Cyclical or Structural—as 7 Million Remain Stuck in Jobs They Don’t Want
Martina Morgan is deciding which bills to skip after her hours fell at Ikea in Renton, Wash. Sandra Sok says she’s been unable to consistently get full-time hours after she transferred to a Wal-Mart in Arizona from one in Colorado.
In Chicago, Jessica Davis is frustrated by her schedule dwindling to 23 hours a week at a McDonald’s even though her location has been hiring. “How can you not get people more hours but you hire more employees?” the 26-year-old Ms. Davis said.
The situation of these so-called involuntary part-time workers—those who would prefer to work more than 34 hours a week—has economists puzzling over whether a higher level of part-time employment might be a permanent legacy of the great recession. If so, it could force more workers to choose between underemployment or working multiple jobs to make ends meet, leading to less income growth and weaker discretionary spending.
Employers added some 3.3 million full-time workers over the past year, but the number of full-time workers in the U.S. is still around 2 million shy of the level before the recession began in 2007. Meanwhile, the ranks of workers who are part time for economic reasons has fallen by 740,000 this year to around 4.5% of the civilian workforce. That is down from a high of 5.9% in 2010 but remains well above the 2.7% average in the decade preceding the recession.
“There’s just less full-time jobs available than there used to be,” said Michelle Girard, chief economist at RBS Securities Inc.
Other data show that the ability of part-time service workers to find full-time work has been much slower during the current recovery. In goods-producing industries, around two-thirds of involuntary part-time workers in July 2013 had found full-time employment by July 2014, up from 60% in 2009, according to a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. But for service-sector workers, the rate has seen little improvement. Around 48% of involuntary part-time workers in July 2013 had found full-time work one year later, up from around 46% in 2009.The slow decline in part-time work is particularly acute when broken out by industries. For the retail and hospitality sectors, the number of involuntary part-time workers in October was nearly double its prerecession level. For construction, mining and manufacturing work, by contrast, the share of such part-time labor was just 9% above its pre-recession level.
An important question for policy makers now is whether the elevated level of involuntary part-time work is due to cyclical factors, meaning it will fall as the economy heals, or to structural changes that have made employers more inclined to rely on a larger contingent workforce and avoid converting part-time workers to full-time positions.
On one side are economists like Ms. Girard, who say greater economic uncertainty and rising labor costs—from increases in the minimum wage, regulations or health-care expenses stemming from the Affordable Care Act—explain higher levels of part-time work. “There is a structural element to this at the very least,” she said.
The health-care law requires employers with 50 or more full-time equivalent workers to offer affordable insurance to employees working 30 or more hours a week or face fines. “Companies are just more inclined to hire part-time workers, not necessarily because of the health-care law, but for business reasons that make it a more attractive option,” Ms. Girard said.
Anecdotal reports have suggested employers have cut hours to prepare for the implementation of the health-care law, but that hasn’t been borne out by economic data.
An analysis by Bowen Garrett of the Urban Institute and Robert Kaestner at the University of Illinois at Chicago found a small increase in part-time work this year, but the increase occurred for part-time jobs with between 30 and 34 hours—above the 30-hour threshold that would be affected by the health-care law.
Other economists say higher levels of involuntary part-time work are mostly cyclical. Businesses don’t appear to be paying part-time workers more than full-time workers; that would be one clear sign of a shift in hiring preferences.
Elevated levels of involuntary part-time work in service jobs may reflect how low-wage employers ramped up hiring earlier in the recovery. More recently, the sector has absorbed those returning to work after long unemployment spells.
Part-time work in service jobs is “a stepping stone for the unemployed and for people out of the labor force,” said Adam Ozimek, an economist at Moody’s Analytics. Labor markets are “improving in just the way you would expect.”
Labor advocates, meanwhile, say technological changes in how businesses schedule employees are at fault. Software allows employers to schedule and cancel shifts rapidly based on business conditions.
Carrie Gleason, the director of the Fair Workweek Initiative at the Center for Popular Democracy, a labor advocacy group, said that could explain why more part-time workers say they want full-time work. “There’s now this persistent uncertainty in the jobs that hourly workers have today,” she said.
Ms. Morgan, the Ikea worker, has held two jobs simultaneously in the past and she isn’t interested in doing that again. The single mother of two, who works in the furniture store’s cafe and receives health benefits, has seen her hours drop to 20 per week from around 35 earlier this year.
“I need to spend some time with my kids,” said Ms. Morgan, 32. “Two jobs? It’s too much.”
Ikea employees are guaranteed a minimum amount of hours every week. Those that can work “during peak times when our customers are in our stores have the opportunity to obtain more hours,” said Mona Liss, a company spokeswoman. The company in June also announced it would raise the average minimum hourly wage in its U.S. stores next year by 17%.
Meanwhile, the structural-cyclical debate has important implications for the Federal Reserve. If the changes are structural, wages might begin to rise sooner than expected, putting more pressure on the Fed to raise interest rates. If they’re cyclical, it would suggest that Fed policy can remain accommodative.
Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen routinely highlights the elevated level of part-time work as a key measure of labor slack. “There are still ... too many who are working part-time but would prefer full-time work,” she said at a press conference in September.
Business surveys conducted by the Atlanta Fed have shown there are more part-time workers because “business conditions don’t justify converting them to full time,” said John Robertson, senior economist at the bank. But other businesses have said their reliance on a larger part-time workforce stemmed from the higher costs of hiring full-time workers.
“It would be wrong to say it’s all cyclical, and it would be wrong to say it’s all structural,” Mr. Robertson said. “We’re somewhere in the middle.”
Ulyses Coatl illustrates how any improvement might unfold. He worked for two years as a stylist at a Levi’s apparel store in lower Manhattan but quit his job in September because the hours had become too unpredictable. His schedule varied from as many as 34 hours a week to four hours, but had averaged around 18 hours in recent weeks, he said.
Mr. Coatl, 20, took a job working in construction this month that provides better pay and a 40-hour week. “It’s enough to support myself,” he said.
A Levi’s spokeswoman said the company is “always looking at ways to improve retail productivity, including store labor models and processes” that conform to “industry best practices.”
Ms. Sok gave up a full-time job she held for seven years at a Wal-Mart in Colorado this summer when she moved to Tolleson, Ariz., to help raise her daughter’s child. She transferred to a part-time cashier job at a different Wal-Mart. She says she’s been unable to consistently get full-time hours and is applying for a second part-time job at FedEx Corp.
Wal-Mart says the majority of its workforce is full time, and the share of part-time workers has stayed about the same over the past decade. A spokeswoman said store employees can view all of the open shifts in their store, and that there are full-time positions available in the store at which Ms. Sok works.
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3) Iran’s Diplomatic Path to the Bomb
Unless the U.S. showers concessions on Iran, no nuclear deal is likely by the Nov. 24 deadline. Then what?
By REUEL MARC GERECHT And MARK DUBOWITZ
Let’s assume the Iranian nuclear talks in Vienna fail to conclude a final agreement by Nov. 24, the already extended deadline under the interim Joint Plan of Action signed in January. Iran’s clerical regime has refused to give much ground in key areas, and the Obama administration has, so far, been unwilling to meet Iranian demands. If the White House doesn’t end November with a cascade of concessions leading to a deal, there are four paths forward. None is appealing. Two might be effective—but the president is unlikely to choose either one.
The deadline is approaching with dwindling hope for a deal in part because Iran has already gotten so much that it wants. During the 2012 negotiations leading to the interim deal, the White House accommodated Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei ’s red lines against reducing enrichment capacity and foreclosing an industrial-size program.
Iran thus got its wish to continue programs for uranium enrichment, long-range ballistic missiles and centrifuge development. Iran further refused to accept intrusive U.N. or other inspections, balked at dismantling the heavy-water reactor at Arak, and declined to discuss past weaponization research. It also won agreement that any restrictions on its nuclear program would be of limited duration. Tehran has treated the U.S. concessions to its demands as permanent—effectively making further diplomatic advances contingent on greater Western “flexibility.”
Washington keeps trying to tiptoe around Mr. Khamenei’s red lines. Take the recent American suggestion that Iran disconnect all “excess” centrifuges and cascade piping used in uranium enrichment at Iran’s Natanz facility—and retire around 14,000 first-generation machines into storage under United Nations safeguards. That plan is likely a nonstarter: Mr. Khamenei has adamantly opposed any reduction in enrichment capacity.
If there is no final deal this month, other scenarios arise.
First: The White House could give up on diplomacy and pre-emptively strike Iran’s nuclear sites. Although this option could seriously, even terminally, damage Tehran’s nuclear program, it is highly unlikely. Mr. Obama is too cautious to do something so aggressive. His entire political agenda and moral philosophy on American disengagement from the Muslim Middle East would collapse after a bombing raid.
Second: The administration could give up on the current talks and default back to sanctions, but again trying to undercut their seriousness, as the president attempted to do in 2011 and 2012. Congress imposed the most economically painful measures—targeting Iran’s oil exports, central bank and access to the Swift interbank system—over his objections. The president has always hoped that “rationality” would take hold in Tehran, that the regime would see the economic benefits that come with good behavior. The Islamic Republic has enjoyed an economic reprieve, thanks to Mr. Obama’s decision last year to de-escalate sanctions pressure by blocking new congressional action and giving billions of dollars in direct sanctions relief as part of the interim deal.
Third: New, even more biting sanctions could be enacted, causing Tehran considerable pain. Current energy markets, with a declining price for crude, offer ample room for Congress to threaten sanctions against any country’s central bank involved in buying Iran’s oil exports, or in giving Tehran access to oil revenues now being held overseas and available only for trade with Iran’s five main oil buyers—China, India, Japan, South Korea and Turkey. But could the sanctions take effect fast enough?
We don’t know the Islamic Republic’s timeline for a bomb. The U.S. needs intelligence sources inside the upper reaches of Iran’s nuclear establishment to know how advanced the regime is with building triggering devices—and it is clear, from official discussions of past National Intelligence Estimates, that the Central Intelligence Agency hasn’t had such sources.
Through the International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspections, the U.S. has measured the regime’s advance in producing uranium and plutonium, which is technically the hardest and most expensive part of building weapons, and can calculate accordingly. Given these advances, new sanctions would have to hit like a tidal wave over the next year to bring greater Iranian flexibility and openness to renewed negotiations.
The wiser bet is that sanctions—though important in restoring the U.S.’s negotiating leverage—will fail without other forms of coercion. And Ayatollah Khamenei, if he isn’t otherwise deterred, may well respond to new, economy-crushing sanctions by accelerating the nuclear program, presenting Mr. Obama with the choice he most dreads: launch militarily strikes or accept Iran as a nuclear state.
Which brings us to option four: The White House could try to reinforce new sanctions with the credible show of military force to intimidate the Iranian regime. President Hasan Rouhani has rather pleadingly confessed in speeches and in his memoirs that the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003 scared the clerical regime and led him to advocate, as Tehran’s chief nuclear negotiator between 2003-05, a tactical pause in the regime’s nuclear aspirations.
To achieve a more lasting impression now would require a significant military operation. Only one target would serve that purpose: Bashar Assad. Syria is Iran’s most helpful ally among Arab states. Taking Mr. Assad down would let Tehran know that America’s withdrawal from the Middle East and President Obama’s dreams of an entente with Iran are over.
Taking out Mr. Assad is unavoidable if Washington is serious about stopping the radicalization of Syria’s Sunni population and getting their help in defeating the radical Islamic State, also known as ISIS. And such an about-face by Washington would be shocking—perhaps paralyzing—in Tehran. Yet it is hard to imagine Mr. Obama taking such action.
Which means that Washington and its European allies will most likely angle for another extension of the talks. Ayatollah Khamenei may accept. The Iranian economy, despite the oil-price drop, has been noticeably improving since the interim deal was concluded in January—and the continuation of the talks poses no threat to further nuclear progress.
It is doubtful, though, that things will remain static. Ayatollah Khamenei has no intention of “freezing” Iran’s nuclear advance. The weapons program has developed massively on his watch, and in his eyes it is probably essential for the survival of the revolution. Another one of the program’s founding fathers, President Rouhani—in whom the Obama administration has put so much hope—almost certainly agrees that retreat is not an option.
For the White House, seeking another extension is probably appealing. The only question, then, is whether Mr. Khamenei will agree to it, and how many more billions in reduced leverage it will cost us. This fearful diplomacy will lead inevitably, as it did with North Korea, to the bomb.
Mr. Gerecht, a former CIA Iranian-targets officer, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mr. Dubowitz is the foundation’s executive director and heads its Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance.
3a) OBAMA'S DANGEROUS RACE FOR AN IRAN DEAL
By Jonathan S. Tobin
With only two weeks to go before the deadline for the end of the current round of nuclear talks with Iran, the Obama administration has been conducting what can only be considered a full-court press aimed at producing a deal before November 24. This is in marked contrast to the relaxed attitude toward the previous deadline for the talks that passed in June and was extended to the fall. It also seems to contradict the behavior of Washington’s European negotiating partners who seemed to be reconciling themselves to yet another extension in the familiar pattern of stalling that has always characterized Iran’s conduct of the negotiations. But though the latest talks in Oman ended without agreement, the flurry of diplomatic action raises the question of whether President Obama believes he needs to get a deal done now before Republicans take control of the Senate in January.
The end of the talks in Oman without an accord is likely not a sign that the deadline won’t be met. The Iranians are past masters of the art of wearing down their Western interlocutors. A year ago, the Iranians’ tough tactics resulted in Secretary of State John Kerry’s decision to sign onto a deal that tacitly endorsed the Islamist regime’s “right” to enrich uranium and keep their nuclear infrastructure. Now they are similarly hammering Kerry in sessions where he continues to demand that Tehran accept what President Obama referred to yesterday as “verifiable lock-tight assurances that they can’t develop a nuclear weapon.” But since Iran has no intention of giving such assurances, they believe Kerry will, as he has before, decide that Western demands are just too difficult to achieve and accept far less in order to produce a deal.
But while the deadlines were originally sold to the U.S. public as evidence that the administration was serious about stopping Iran, the potential for a cutoff in the talks seems to be affecting Obama and Kerry far more than it is the Iranians. With sanctions already having been loosened and Europeans clamoring for an end to all restrictions on doing business with the regime, Tehran seems unmoved by the prospect of an end to the negotiations. By contrast, the administration seems genuinely fearful that November 24 will pass without diplomatic success.
Selling the U.S. public and Congress on yet another extension would be embarrassing but, given Obama’s success in squelching past criticisms of his Iran policy, would not be that much of a stretch. So long as he could pretend that the Iranians were negotiating in good faith, skeptics could be put down as warmongers who oppose diplomacy. But instead of slouching toward another round of seemingly endless negotiations, the Obama foreign-policy team is acting as if the deadline matters this time.
It is theoretically possible that this means the president intends to treat an Iranian refusal to sign as the signal for ratcheting up pressure on Tehran. Tightening rather than loosening of sanctions might recover some of the ground the president has lost in the last year. But few in Washington or anywhere else think this is likely. Years of on-and-off secret talks with the Iranians, including the recent revelations of the president’s correspondence with Iran’s Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, show that Obama’s goal centers more on détente with the regime, not halting its nuclear project.
That leads to the inevitable conclusion that the motivation for the diplomatic frenzy is not so much fear of having to get tough with Iran as it is fear that a Republican-controlled Congress will prevent the implementation of another weak deal. There’s little doubt that without outgoing Majority Leader Harry Reid to help the president stall advocates of tougher sanctions, Congress will pass a new bill that will hold the administration and Tehran accountable. A deal that allows Iran to become a threshold nuclear power—something that seems almost certain given the administration’s habit of accepting Tehran’s no’s as final and then moving on to the next concession—will set off a major battle in the Senate even if Obama does try to evade the constitutional requirement of submitting it to the Senate for a vote.
But the president’s fear of having to present such a dubious deal to the public seems to be inspiring him to present a weaker, not a tougher position to Iran. The Iranians know this and are standing their ground in the expectation that rather than walking away from the table, Obama will accept another bad deal in order to get it all done before McConnell is running the Senate.
But rather than treating this as a partisan matter, both Republicans and Democrats in the Congress should be alarmed at the prospect of the president holding a fire sale of vital American interests merely to avoid having to carry on his appeasement of Iran while being held accountable by a GOP-run Senate. No matter what terms the president presents to the public, there seems little chance that any of them can be enforced in the absence of more United Nations inspections of Iranian facilities, which are still being denied by the ayatollahs or an end to ongoing cheating on the interim agreement. Nor should either party be comforted by the idea that the president will be relying on the trustworthiness of his pen pal Khamenei at the same time the latter is tweeting out a steady barrage of anti-Semitic and genocidal threats toward Israel.
If there is anything more dangerous than a deliberate campaign of engagement with Iran, it is the current race to a deal that can’t be verified and won’t put an end to the regime’s nuclear ambitions. This should be a signal for responsible members of both parties that it is time to pass the tougher sanctions that Obama successfully defeated last winter.
3b) LOOMING IRAN DEAL SPELLS THE EMPOWERING OF EVIL
By David Horovitz
It’s almost over. It really doesn’t much matter if a triumphant US Secretary of State John Kerry announces in the next few hours or days that a dramatic accord has been reached with Iran to regulate its nuclear program, or if it is decided to extend the negotiations beyond the November 24 deadline to finalize that deal. We know where the negotiations are heading. We know that the conclusion is dire.
The P5+1 countries, their approach to talks with the ayatollahs determined by the Obama administration, have insistently behaved like the Three Wise Monkeys. Iran pours its energies into mastering the technology for nuclear weapons. From its “supreme leader” on down it makes crystal clear its hegemonic regional ambitions, its contempt for the West, and its aim to bring about the demise of Israel. And the US-led international community willfully closes its eyes and ears to the dangers, wishing them away.
Ultimately, the failure is rooted in President Barack Obama’s desire to heal relations with America’s enemies in this part of the world. But what the administration would like to have perceived as a new generosity of spirit emanating from Washington, a desire to conquer past animosities, to build new bridges, to play fair, is regarded in this brutal region, by the purveyors of that brutality, as weakness.
The P5+1 negotiators aim to avoid humiliating Iran, so they choose not to insist on IAEA inspectors gaining access to the Parchin facility where they would find evidence of Iran’s years of efforts at nuclear weaponization. And thus Iran can publicly maintain the fiction that it does not seek, and has not been seeking, the bomb.
The P5+1 negotiators back away from the earlier goal of using the economic pressure of sanctions in order to force Iran into a strategic U-turn — to dismantle the facilities and equipment that have brought it so far along the road to nuclear weapons — and instead now work for an accord that would, in theory, keep Iran some 6 to 18 months from the ability to produce the fissile material for a bomb. This very framework is a tacit admission that Iran, if left unchecked, would push full speed ahead to the nuclear weapons it risibly claims not to seek. But the negotiators prefer not to acknowledge this logistical flaw at the heart of their approach.
The P5+1 negotiators would have us believe that a better deal is simply not possible — not the best negotiating strategy. When you tell the world that a better deal is out of reach, you can be dead certain that the Iranians are listening, and are not going to agree to a better deal.
The P5+1 negotiators would have us believe that there was insufficient international resolve to force Iran into the corner, that the sanctions regime was not sustainable, that an imperfect deal is far better than no deal at all, that Iran’s nuclear scientists have the knowhow now and nothing can change that. Lousy arguments, one and all.
Statecraft in the face of an extraordinarily dangerous regime required mustering the international resolve to reverse Tehran’s drive for the bomb; it required maintaining the unity of purpose to ensure sanctions were kept in place and ratcheted up as required; it required making plain that there would be no deal at all unless the necessary terms were reached, with the combined threat of more sanctions and a military readiness to underpin that stance; and it required the dismissal of ridiculous, extraneous, defeatist arguments such as the one that holds that the Iranians have the knowhow anyway.
Syria’s scientists, as Emily Landau, an expert on nuclear proliferation at Tel Aviv University’s INSS think tank, points out, did not suddenly lose the knowhow to build chemical weapons when international pressure forced President Bashar Assad into giving up his chemical weapons capabilities last year. They still have the knowhow, but their leadership no longer risks having them utilize it.
Dr. Emily Landau (photo credit: YouTube screenshot)
Dr. Emily Landau (photo credit: YouTube screenshot)
If only the Iranians had been forced into a similar capitulation. Having the knowhow is not the issue. It’s attaining the bomb. That’s what is irreversible — terrifyingly so in the case of Iran.
Let nobody kid themselves. Whether the deal now taking shape ostensibly keeps Iran six months or eighteen months from the bomb makes no significant difference. An arrangement that depends on verifying Iranian good behavior and taking speedy counteraction in the event of bad behavior is simply not workable — and both sides know it.
Iran can be relied upon to breach the terms of the deal — just as it breached the interim agreement, says Landau, by pouring gas into its IR5 centrifuges. It can then be relied upon to dispute that it has breached the terms — just as it did this week in the case of the IR5s. The international community would then have to determine whether a breach has occurred, decide whether it merits a response, agree on what kind of response, and take action. That’s the same international community that has failed to utilize the sanctions regime to reverse the program in the first place, up against the same resolute Iranian regime. Really, forget about it.
“The United States,” says Landau (who spoke to me at length for this article), “has been acting as though it is engaged in a confidence-building effort, showing the other side that it can be trusted, that ‘we can reach a common goal.’ But there is no common goal. Iran does not want a deal that would require it to back away from its nuclear program. It wants a deal that allows it to become a threshold state that can go for the bomb at a time of its choosing.
“Once the goal became merely to restrain Iran, to keep it months away from a nuclear weapons capability rather than forcing a strategic U-turn,” she says, “the game was lost.”
Whether in the next few hours or days, or a few weeks from now, then, we can brace for handshakes, embraces and brief bonhomie; for an Iran whose smooth-talking foreign minister hails vindication while his supreme leader spouts poison; for a United States that claims success, talks of having capped and regulated the Iranians, and seeks to press on toward some kind of rapprochement despite every indication that Iran seeks nothing of the sort.
The prospect of regime change in Iran will have diminished still further. The region’s more moderate states will know themselves more vulnerable. Tehran will be hugely emboldened.
And what of Israel? Directly endangered by Iran, and rightly reluctant to resort to the military intervention that the United States should have credibly threatened, Israel cannot afford to adopt the Three Wise Monkeys approach. We see the evil all too clearly. While the international community celebrates a Pyrrhic victory, protecting this country, never anything less than immensely challenging, will have become significantly more complex.
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4)
It Wasn’t Just Obama
The Democrats’ policies have been pillaging their own political base.
MARTIN KOZLOWSKI
45 COMMENTS
The Democrats who were caught standing on the beach last week when the GOP’s 40-foot wave washed over them are now explaining why it wasn’t their fault.
No. 1: It’s not us; it’s what’s his name, the unpopular president. (And that awful Valerie Jarrett. )
No. 2: It was a midterm election with a bad map; we’ll be back in 2016. Hillary to the rescue.
Official Obama Explanation : My ideas and policies are fine; I just have a messaging problem.
USS Democrat Captain Nancy Pelosi : “There was an ebbing, an ebb tide, for us.”
This all reminds me of the classic film satire, “I’m All Right, Jack,” about the dying days of the British trade-union movement. When an idealistic young factory worker shows the efficiency gains possible from actually using a forklift, the union steward calls a strike. Three guesses which Democrats in the U.S. version would play the roles of Peter Sellers, Terry-Thomas and Margaret Rutherford.
A few Democratic voices, mostly party professionals whose job is winning elections, have said the donkey herd that just ran off the cliff needs to rethink its sense of direction. No one is listening to them. Most Democrats, especially the left that took control of the party in 2008, deny any problem. And well they might. There is no Plan B.
The Democrats’ standard political model is generally attributed to FDR confidante Harry Hopkins : “We will spend and spend, and tax and tax, and elect and elect.” Hopkins denied ever using these words, but the formula lived on.
Tax, spend and elect just slammed into the mountain.
In Wisconsin, the party’s armies not only lost to Scott Walker (twice!) but watched Republicans gain the most seats in the state’s legislature in 50 years. How else to explain former businessman Rick Snyder winning re-election as governor in Michigan? New England, notably Massachusetts, is bleeding red again. Nevada’s state government is so red that Harry Reid may have to sneak into Nevada from the California side of Lake Tahoe.
Then there’s Maryland. We may look back on Maryland’s 2014 gubernatorial election as the battlefield where the long liberal advance stopped. In blue Maryland, and elsewhere, the Democrats are losing for the same reason medieval potentates fell: They resorted to plundering their own people.
Maryland’s victorious Republican gubernatorial candidate, Larry Hogan, deserves credit for alerting the population to the dangers of Democratic pillage. He ran hard on the reality that Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley in two terms raised some 40 taxes and fees, including the corporate income tax, sales tax, personal income tax and a “millionaire’s tax.” Maryland was a progressive Utopia. But it is the wave after wave of fees in Maryland and other states that is killing the Democrats politically.
The Maryland Democrats imposed or raised fees on anything that moved—license plates, liquor, fishing, birth and death certificates, even something called “storm water management fees” based on the size of people’s roofs, driveways, patios and such. Bridge and tunnel tolls rose every year from 2011 to 2013.
Less noticed outside Massachusetts than the election of Republican Charlie Baker as governor was that voters also overturned a law that ratcheted up the state’s gasoline tax each year at the inflation rate. No more.
Illinois residents, who just put GOP businessman Bruce Rauner in the statehouse, experienced a similar fee and tax mania under Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn.
The Democratic Party has become the Nickel-and-Dime Empire. Their compulsion to chisel money out of the population is collapsing the empire from within. Here’s how:
The Democrats are the party of the state and public sector. Over a long period, the costs of maintaining the state have risen inexorably, especially in the North due to public-union costs and transfer payments. We may call this phenomenon political global warming, with the gases of public spending driving the fiscal tides ever higher.
Unwilling to restructure government, state Democrats used taxes as sand bags. First they raised taxes on large business. Then the “wealthy.” Then came the fees and regulatory costs for smaller businesses. In Maryland and Illinois, companies and the wealthy fled.
It still wasn’t enough. Over the past decade, Democratic politicians (and some Republicans) started imposing regressive fees on everyone. Which means the party’s pols are now siphoning cash straight out of the budgets of their blue-collar and middle-class base. That hurts.
Traditional Democratic liberals understood that the private sector at least needed room to breathe. The party’s left, having self-deported from the private sector, does not. Thus at the same time their governors were bleeding the base, congressional Democrats voted through ObamaCare with its “Cadillac tax,” device tax, Transitional Reinsurance Fee and noncompliance penalties. As you can see, it’s just a messaging problem.
It was good being the party of Robin Hood. Until they morphed into the Sheriff of Nottingham. In November 2014, the forest people in at least four states figured out who has been picking their pockets. What the Democratic Party’s answer will be in 2016 to this public rebellion is so far nonexistent.
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| Full-fledged war' across Egypt as navy attacked for first time,experts say |
First attack on Egypt's navy comes less than three weeks after assault in North Sinai killed 31 soldiers Mariam Rizk, AHRAMONLINE A militant insurgency is turning into a full-fledged war across Egypt, experts said on Thursday, hours after the army announced an assault on a navy ship, the first of its kind. The army said the "terrorist attack" on its boat in the early hours of Wednesday in the Mediterranean left five navy personnel injured, while eight others remain missing. The military has been fighting Islamic extremists, originally based in the restive Sinai Peninsula, for a decade. But after the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi last year, and with jihadist groups spreading fast across the Middle East, attacks have spiked and spilled into the capital and other cities. The attack, considered a strategic shift in militant attacks, comes less than three weeks after an attack on an army checkpoint in North Sinai left 31 troops dead, the highest single death toll for the military in decades. A three-month state of emergency was declared in the area after the attack, and over 1,100 families were evicted to create a buffer zone across the Rafah-Gaza border. The army has regularly announced killings and arrests of alleged militants, as well as destroying tunnels reportedly used to smuggle weapons, as part of what has been deemed a step up in the offensive against the growing insurgency. Commenting on the possible causes behind the militants' shift to nautical attacks, military expert Ashraf Sweilam said it could be a strategy to supply weapons to Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis (ABM), Sinai's most powerful militant group, which has likely suffered from a shortage in resources due to the escalation in the army's campaign. Wednesday's naval assault could also be an attempt to ship jihadists to Egypt's coasts for more attacks, Sweilam added. Earlier this week, ABM swore allegiance to the Islamic State (IS), the militant group which has seized large parts of Iraq and Syria. IS has previously called on Egyptian insurgents to step up attacks against security forces, raising more fears of the region's growing jihadist network. Sweilam said the sea attack should not be shocking, though, as "the battleground is stretched all over Egyptian land." "We are in a full-fledged war, and in the war you can expect anything," Sweilam said. "And this is the first time Egypt has faced threats on all its borders, not just the eastern Gaza one." Another view is that ABM has lost control over its Sinai base and is now looking for any security soft spots, whether in the western parts of the country or in the Nile valley or Delta, said Ahmed Ban, an expert in Islamic movements. "The group is seeking any encounter with the security forces to reassure its members and to raise their morale after the grave losses they've sustained in Sinai," Ban said. Damietta's port, 40 nautical miles away from the site of Wednesday's reported naval attack, was still operating during the assault and no activities were halted. A huge fishing boat was found burned – although it's unclear whether it was used in the attack or simply caught in the crossfire. The military said it destroyed four boats used by the assailants and arrested 32 suspects, but offered no further details. Meanwhile, a series of scattered near-daily smaller attacks has taken place across Cairo and other cities, mainly targeting security posts, but occasionally harming civilians near university campuses or metro stations. Authorities have blamed the Muslim Brotherhood, from which ousted president Mohamed Morsi hails, and its Islamist allies for the growing violence since Morsi's removal in July 2013. There has been little evidence, though, linking radical groups and the political Islamists who won a series of elections after the country's popular 2011 revolt. The Brotherhood was declared a terrorist group last year. "The scattered explosions nationwide are meant to distract the Egyptian army and to give the impression that it's incapable of facing the repeated attacks," Sewilam said. "It's no big deal to pay a few hundred pounds for someone to carry explosives or to throw a bomb." Smaller attacks have been claimed by another militant group calling itself Ajnad Misr, as revenge for the violent dispersal of two pro-Morsi camps in Cairo in August 2013 that left hundreds dead. Ban thinks the scattered, smaller explosions aren't linked to the bigger network of ABM, but were rather executed by smaller groups like Ajnad Misr and other terrorist cells formed after the dispersals last year. "It shows from the scale and the gravity of their assaults … but at the same time it acts as a constant warning to the Egyptian state," Ban said. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------6) A.B. Stoddard: All eyes on Jeb Bush The 2016 GOP presidential nominating contest, which began after last week’s midterm elections wrapped up, already includes 17 potential candidates and their families, hundreds of would-be staff and several dozen top Republican donors. Though they aren’t saying it out loud, all of them are waiting for the decision of one person: former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
In the weeks to come, Bush is expected to declare himself a candidate for president or to officially bow out. Money men need to know, as do candidates crafting messages against one another and, of course, those who influence Mitt Romney. Aides close to the 2012 GOP presidential nominee have already said Romney is not yet confident about the field and could run if Bush decides not to.
Conservatives are already trying to make the point that Bush would divide the party, due to his past support for comprehensive immigration reform and his endorsement of Common Core education standards. They want someone who can run against presumed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s ingrained insider-incumbency and do not want a race between two political dynasties. Bush would “make it impossible for Republicans to run the kind of campaign they need in 2016,” wrote Ramesh Ponnuru of theNational Review this week.
Bush himself is reportedly concerned with the “family business” baggage a Bush v. Clinton race would offer a country so disgusted by politics. Former President George W. Bush said this week of his brother, “I heard him say he doesn’t like the idea of a political class. ... The idea of ‘Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Bush’ troubles him, which speaks to his great integrity. I said, ‘Well how’s this sound: Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Clinton?’ ”
The decision will be based on how he feels, Jeb Bush admitted in February. “I’m deferring that decision to the right time, which is later this year, and the decision will be based on, can I do it joyfully, because I think we need to have candidates lift our spirits,” he said. Asked about timing, he said, “There’s a time to make a decision. You shouldn’t make it too early, and you shouldn’t make it too late. There’s a time. There’s a window.”
The window is now open and a decision is forthcoming, according to intimates, and even family members have stunned the political world by speaking out about a possible Jeb Bush run, like his son, George P. Bush, who told NBC News last month it was more likely than not.
And of course, it’s not at all subtle that George W. Bush has published a book about his beloved father, former President George H.W. Bush, immediately following the 2014 midterm elections.
The timing for Jeb Bush, who has supported a path to citizenship, could become perilous in light of any announcement of executive action on immigration reform by President Obama, which is expected soon. Republicans say such a move would be unconstitutional and tantamount, in Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell’s words, to “waving a red flag in front of a bull.” In his bookImmigration Wars, released in 2013, the former governor flip-flopped on his prior support for citizenship and instead endorsed “a path to permanent legal residency.” Then in media interviews, following conservative criticism of the book, he admitted he had supported both, leading PolitiFact to rule accusations by Democrats of a “flip-flop-flip” true.
As much as some conservatives hope Jeb Bush doesn’t run, there are others still begging him to, because — like Romney — they worry there is no one formidable enough to raise the funds necessary — at least $1 billion — to go up against the Clinton political machine.
But a Bush candidacy would guarantee immigration comes back to the fore in the presidential primary, just as it did in 2012, which is exactly what Republicans don’t want.
Stoddard is an associate editor of The Hill.
6a) Ben Carson Making Case to Be Taken Seriously in 2016
By Scott Conroy
When Ben Carson keynoted the Polk County Republican Party dinner in Des Moines this past August, the first thing noticed by longtime Iowa observers of presidential politics was the size of the crowd.
A sold-out audience of 400 attended the event -- an impressive showing for a late-summer county-level fundraiser in the nation’s first voting state.
But perhaps even more revealing than the crowd size was its composition.
Instead of the well-known GOP activists who typically attend such functions in droves, unfamiliar faces dominated the Carson event. These were people who had become familiar with the retired pediatric neurosurgeon through his regular appearances on The Fox News Channel and his best-selling book. And, by and large, they were not longtime participants in state politics.
“There was this whole new group of people, and we were just floored,” recalled Polk County GOP Chairman Will Rogers.
That reaction has been a common one following Carson’s speaking engagements around the nation this year. In Iowa and the other early-voting states, in particular, it is Carson’s ability to draw from a new herd of caucus-goers and primary voters that makes him a potential presidential candidate to watch, despite his glaring vulnerabilities.
A rhetorical missile-launcher in human form, who has never before run for public office, Carson is easy to dismiss as a serious contender. But already a hero among grassroots conservatives who hold outsized influence in the early GOP nominating process, Carson’s capacity to make significant noise in 2016 should not be overlooked.
The political newcomer was long renowned in the medical field for being the first surgeon to successfully separate twins conjoined at the head (and was even played by Cuba Gooding Jr. in a made-for-TV movie). But as recently as two years ago, he did not amount to even a blip on the presidential radar screen.
That all changed in February 2013, when Carson earned a chorus of adulation from the right after outlining his black-and-white principles on various hot-button issues at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington -- with President Obama sitting just a few feet away.
Since then, a growing stream of grassroots conservatives have discovered something they love in Carson’s unique political potion, which combines three core ingredients: a compelling life story, his unimpeachable credentials as a political outsider and a blunt approach to speechifying, all refracted through his reserved, soft-spoken personality. (There may be an unspoken fourth ingredient -- that Carson is an African-American conservative.)
Nowhere has his rise been more visible than in Iowa, where a recent Bloomberg/Des Moines Register poll of a hypothetical 2016 Republican field showed the political neophyte in second place behind only Mitt Romney, who has insisted repeatedly that he does not plan to run for president a third time.
On the Saturday before Thanksgiving, Carson is scheduled to return to the Hawkeye State to headline the annual dinner hosted by the Family Leader, a prominent socially conservative organization in the state that plays a significant role in harnessing evangelical caucus-goers.
Family Leader President Bob Vander Plaats said tickets for the event have been going at a rate “exponentially” faster than for similar dinners in the past.
In an interview with RCP, Vander Plaats issued a warning to Carson’s potential opponents.
“They underestimate Dr. Carson at their own peril because I don’t think his campaign is going to be a typical campaign,” Vander Plaats said. “I believe that if he’s going to run and he’s going to get the kind of support it looks like he’s going to get, it’s going to be more like a force of nature than a well-orchestrated, ‘politics as usual’ campaign. So my advice to Dr. Carson would be keep doing what you’re doing.”
What the 63-year-old Detroit native has been doing is building his media presence and refining his message on core issues, while largely outsourcing early organizational efforts to an exceptionally well-funded group that has been paving the way for a potential campaign for more than a year.
The National Draft Ben Carson for President Committee (also known as Draft Ben Carson) has raised over $11 million since it was founded in August 2013, more than $8 million of which has come from contributions under $200.
This showing has not only dwarfed similar efforts being conducted on behalf of other possible GOP candidates, it has even exceeded the $10.2 million raised so far by Ready for Hillary -- the draft effort to support presumed Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton.
That summer sales of Carson’s most recent book, “One Nation,” outpaced those of Clinton’s far more widely publicized tome, “Hard Choices,” provides another example of how fired up his supporters are about a prospective White House run.
Draft Ben Carson’s efforts in Iowa are being led by state Rep. Rob Taylor and his wife, Christi Taylor, who is the chairperson for the Dallas County Republican Party -- one of the most active county-level GOP groups in the state.
Last month, Draft Ben Carson announced that it had already signed up chairmen to represent the would-be candidate in all 99 Iowa counties. Longtime Iowa GOP organizer Tina Goff helped achieve that milestone, an especially notable one considering that many official presidential campaigns fail to reach it.
And Draft Ben Carson hasn’t confined itself to Iowa.
In advance of the midterm elections, the group aired over $500,000 worth of aggressive radio ads, making the case to black voters in Louisiana and North Carolina that the incumbent Democratic senators in those states were failing them.
After a pre-election stint in Iowa, Draft Ben Carson’s co-founder and campaign director, Vernon Robinson, decamped to Louisiana to help get Carson supporters behind Republican Bill Cassidy in his Dec. 6 runoff campaign against incumbent Democrat Mary Landrieu.
Robinson told RCP that if and when Carson declares his candidacy, the draft organization plans to remain active (though under a different name), focusing on outreach to minorities, medical professionals and evangelicals -- three groups for whom Carson, an African-American physician and devout Christian, may prove a particularly adept messenger.
“What we will do should Dr. Carson get the nomination is to communicate directly with minority voters [via] the media that they know and trust, like urban contemporary radio,” Robinson said. “And we’ll make the case explicitly that Ben Carson and the Republicans are X, Hillary Clinton and the Democrats are Y, now let’s have an election.”
In a spring interview with RealClearPolitics, for instance, he suggested that the demands and scrutiny of his current life on the lecture and media circuit are similar to what he would face in a presidential campaign.
“I’m not sure it is that different, to be honest with you, than what I’ve been doing the last year,” Carson said. “If it needs to be done, having spent decades with 12- to 18-hour days, it will still be a piece of cake in comparison.”
And like previous Republican long-shot contenders who rallied the conservative grassroots only to flame out eventually, Carson has a tendency to overreach in searching for the punchiest sound bite.
He is particularly fond of doling out dubious comparisons between the United States under President Obama and Nazi Germany under Hitler, for which he has refused to backtrack whenever given the opportunity to do so.
During an interview with liberal radio host Alan Colmes that was conducted just before the midterms, Carson speculated that if Republicans did not win the Senate, there might not even be an election in 2016 because “there may be so much anarchy going on” in the United States.
Carson’s proclivity for overstatement sometimes rankles even his closest advisers.
“We’ve watched him commit gaffe after gaffe and thought he’d torpedoed himself,” said Armstrong Williams, the conservative commentator and filmmaker who is Carson’s longtime business manager. “And yet people are willing to dust him off because they see something much deeper. It seems like the longer he stays on the scene, the more he gains. Of course, he’s a long shot.”
Still, the Iowa Republican caucuses have a tradition of elevating such long shots, and the infrastructure there that has already been built for Carson figures to give him a significant leg up over previous underdogs.
In addition to the draft movement, he has two other political action committees working on his behalf, revealing his backers’ aptitude for navigating the tangled web of big-money groups -- a facility that is essential for any serious national political contender.
Carson serves as chairman of Save Our Health Care, a project funded by the American Legacy PAC, which raised over $6 million during the last election cycle.
That group is now in the process of launching a related 501(c)(4) “public welfare” organization called The American Legacy Center, which will have the ability to hide its donors’ identities and thus become a more appealing avenue for some deep-pocketed financiers, who often want to remain anonymous.
Nonetheless, in keeping with the makeup of the other pro-Carson efforts, American Legacy PAC Executive Director Adam Waldeck said he expects the new group to remain largely reliant on small donors.
“He has such a strong grassroots following,” Waldeck said. “In your typical (c)(4), you’ll probably see a lot of big donors -- and obviously those are folks we’re having conversations with, too -- but if we can have it both ways, that’d be the way to do it.”
The fourth outside group promoting Carson is called USA First PAC -- an organization that acts as the prospective candidate’s direct political arm.
Over the weekend, an hour-long, campaign-style documentary promoting Carson ran in 37 local media markets around the country, including in Iowa.
Upon learning that the film -- made by the production company Williams operates -- had been released, the Fox News Channel terminated Carson’s status as a paid contributor.
Though Williams insists Carson is seriously considering a presidential bid, he hopes the subject of his most recent film decides against it.
When told Carson had suggested that the demands on his current professional life were similar to those he would face in a presidential campaign, the moviemaker laughed heartily.
“He’s not a politician and clearly does not understand what it takes to run for president,” Williams said. “He’s a very caring person. He sees the good in people, and it’ll be interesting to see whether he can maintain that person he’s always been or whether politics will change that calmness and that spirit and the warmth. You know, naivety can be a wonderful thing.”
6b) THE BIGGEST LOSER OF THEM ALL
Does anybody really think Hillary had a good election night?
Andrew Romano, a California-based writer for Yahoo News, spilled a lot of ink in recent weeks explaining why Latinos were not ditching the Democrats in this election (they moved toward the GOP by six percent overall, and more in some tight key races), why Mark Udall might “still have a shot in Colorado” (he didn’t), and why Republican governors were “flailing” in their quests for re-election (four of the five he named won, and the one who lost, the extremely unpopular Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania, had long been a fifteen to twenty point underdog).
So he’s not exactly a credible pundit when he pens his newest morsel of Democratic hope-over-reality naïveté: that the big winner of the 2014 midterms was Hillary Clinton.
Romano’s wishful thinking is being echoed by many on the hard and soft left, includingForbes contributor Rick “I write from the left” Ungar, Cosmopolitan’s senior political writer Jill “Feministe” Filipovic (I didn’t’ know Cosmo even had such a position, though I suppose a magazine so focused on positions would have one of each…), Reuters political reporterGabriel Debenedetti, AMERICAblog’s Progressive editor-in-chief John Aravosis, and editor of the National Interest, Jacob Heilbrunn.
The standard version of the “Hillary won the midterms” myth goes something like this:
1. The midterms’ massive repudiation of President Obama and what Charles Krauthammer calls “Obamaism” means that pressure from Hillary’s left including fear of a presidential run by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has all but vanished, allowing Hillary to campaign in the center rather than continuing on her “businesses don’t create jobs” idiocy. (Ungar)
2. The 2014 results were “more of a referendum on questions about Obama’s leadership rather than a sweeping rejection of Democratic policies” (Debenedetti), allowing Clinton not only to run against Republicans but also giving her more political leeway to contrast herself with President Obama.
3. Republicans will govern like right-wing nuts, including “two long years of attacks on women’s rights” (Filipovic), engaging in “shenanigans” led by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) such as voting to repeal Obamacare — “just imagine the crazy things Ted Cruz and the Tea Partyers are going to come up with” (Aravosis) — while “pushing for a renewed military surge in the Middle East” (Heilbrunn), thereby allowing Hillary to campaign against an “impetuous” Republican Party that will be just as unpopular as the GOP was in 2008.
Republicans aren’t buying it. Some likely GOP presidential contenders, assuming that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee in 2016, came out of the election swinging at Hillary.
Most notably, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul led with a Twitter campaign based on the hashtag #HillarysLosers showing pictures of Clinton with the many candidates whom she supported who were trounced last Tuesday. Paul went for the jugular, posting not only that Hillary was the night’s big loser but also taunting her: “You didn’t think it could get worse than your book tour? It did.”
That post came complete with a picture of Clinton with Kentucky’s loser, Alison Lundergan Grimes, whose 15.5 percent drubbing at the hands of future Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was twice as bad as polls predicted. Other #HillarysLosers as posted on Facebook — Sen. Paul blanketed social media — included incumbents Kay Hagan (NC), Mark Udall (CO), and Mark Pryor of Clinton’s “home state” of Arkansas. More than half of the candidates endorsed by Hillary lost, including seven of eight women candidates and many of the highest profile Democrats across the country.
In a Sunday interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, Wisconsin Governor and likely Republican presidential aspirant Scott Walker — himself probably the biggest winner of the midterms — said that “Hillary Clinton is all about Washington” and “in many ways, she was the big loser on Tuesday because she embodies everything that’s wrong with Washington.” (Among other things, Walker was making the case that a governor would be a better candidate than a member of Congress.)
One of the few mainstream political outlets that accurately portrayed the midterms’ impact on Hillary was the National Journal. As reporter Tim Alberta put it:
President Obama took a beating Tuesday night, and therefore, so did Clinton. The midterm results represented a blistering rebuke of Obama, and it’s fantasy to think his former secretary of State and Democratic heir apparent doesn’t feel the second-hand sting. Clinton remains the highest-profile appointment of the Obama administration. She played a major role in crafting and executing the president’s foreign policy. And her likely presidential campaign, fairly or unfairly, is already viewed as an attempt to secure “Obama’s third term.” That’s dangerous territory for Clinton…
Paul and Walker’s criticisms, along with Mr. Alberta’s analysis, are valid but do not directly address the current Democratic talking points about Hillary and her midterm “victory.” Those talking points deserve direct contradiction.
1. Liberal claim: By neutering the Progressive wing of the party, the election will allow Hillary to stop selling out to the left.
Reality: Even in comparison to Barack Obama, nobody will buy a rebranding of Hillary as a centrist. She was for Obamacare, then known as Hillarycare, fifteen years before this president shoved it down the throat of an unwilling nation which is still choking on it. One of the lessons learned by Democrats in 2014 is that their base is disheartened — a mirror image of the lesson learned painfully by Republicans in 2012. In order to raise money, staff phone banks, and get people knocking on doors, Hillary will have to motivate the Progressive base of the party — which she can only do by continuing to appeal to their leftist instincts. Trying to be a bland centrist, much less a near-Republican won’t work for Hillary any more than it worked for Bob Dole or John “maverick” McCain or even Mitt Romney (though Romney had moved aggressively to the right during the primary season).
2. Liberal claim: The election was about President Obama’s leadership rather than Democratic policy preferences, allowing Hillary to campaign somewhat against Obama and portray herself as not seeking “the third Obama term.”
Reality: Of the three claims, this one has the most merit — or at least the first half of it does. The election was as much about Barack Obama’s utter inability to lead and his “my way or the highway” approach to dealing with Republicans (and occasionally even with Democrats) than it was about specific policies despite persistent public opposition to Obamacare. Unfortunately, most independent voters (much less Democrats) are not well-enough informed to have turned against Progressivism more broadly even as they turned against its current leading representative, not realizing that he is that movement’s apotheosis. So Hillary can attempt to stay close to Progressive policy goals while suggesting that President Obama’s methods were misguided, roughly the same criticism she (not coincidentally) offered of Obama’s mentor Saul Alinsky when she penned her 1969 Wellesley College senior thesis on the man. (Two years later she wrote Alinsky a letter asking whenRules for Radicals would be released, calling the book “the fulfillment of Revelation.” Sounds like a good place to start for another Obama term.)
But again, will the public buy it? That depends primarily on whether Republicans can lash her to the mast of the sinking ship that is the Obama legacy just as they did to now-defeated Democrats across the nation last week. You can bet that a “third Obama term” will be a phrase you’ll be utterly sick of two years from today.
3. Liberal claim: Republicans, being led by the nose by Ted Cruz, will govern like out-of-touch extremists, particularly on social issues.
Reality: Can you name a 2014 Republican candidate for a major office who aggressively campaigned against the Supreme Court’s de facto permitting of gay marriage by refusing to hear cases on the subject (something which may soon change with the Sixth Circuit’supholding of bans on same-sex marriage)? Yes, Ted Cruz (who was not on a ballot this year) is an outspoken champion of traditional marriage. But in a CNBC interview on October 30, Cruz said, “I support the Constitution letting each state decide each marriage law consistent with the values of their citizens. If the citizens of California decide they want to allow gay marriage, that’s a decision for them.” That led to former Rep. Barney Frank praising Cruz’s “evolution” on the issue as very “significant politically.” And when host Joe Kernen asked Cruz if Republicans would continue to focus on social issues, Cruz immediately pivoted to taxes, economics and the constitution. Ted Cruz may be aggressive, he may be self-serving and ambitious (as all politicians are), and he may occasionally be wrong. But he’s not an idiot and will not try, much less succeed, in dragging Republicans to political suicide in a country that is moving inexorably toward a more libertarian — or at least more federalist — approach to social issues. Similarly, can you name a Republican candidate for major office (with the possible exception of some late conservative-baiting by Kansas Senator Pat Roberts) for whom opposition to abortion was a leading campaign plank? In Colorado, Iowa, North Carolina, and elsewhere, Republican Senate candidates minimized their support for “personhood amendments.” In Colorado, “personhood” (which defines an unborn child or fetus as a person for certain legal purposes) lost for the third straight time. Although the 2014 language was narrower than the prior two failures, the measure lost 65 percent to 35 percent even as Republican Cory Gardner was defeating incumbent Democratic Senator Mark Udall by 2.5 percent. As the Cook Political Report noted, among 15 issue areas on which candidates spent money advertising, social issues were the fourth lowest. Fully 78 percent of spending in that category was by Democrats as they relied on the hackneyed “war on women” strategy which, mercifully, seems to have run its course following the jump-the-shark moment of a reporter calling out “Mark Uterus” for his focus on birth control in what George Will called Udall’s “relentlessly gynecological campaign.”
Just as Hillary must appeal to her liberal base, Republicans have the unenviable task of appealing to socially conservative activists while still trying to capture the votes of independents and moderates. Perhaps Ted Cruz’s appeal to federalism shows such a path.
In his post-election press conference, future Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) gave a welcome demonstration of the long-lost sound of adult supervision inside the beltway. McConnell may have the occasional tug-of-war with Tea Party-oriented Senators Ted Cruz, Mike Lee (UT), Rand Paul (KY), and perhaps the newly-elected Tom Cotton (AR) and Ben Sasse (NE). But he is a disciplined and experienced Washington hand who appreciates the institution he will soon lead. McConnell will ensure that Republicans — even if they do hold hearings exploring the worst failures and abuses of the Obama administration, which they should — are shown as rational leaders rather than as “right-wing whack-jobs” and the “Party of No.”
As we watch the implosion of the Obama presidency, many Democrats have (and many have long had) buyer’s remorse over not electing Hillary Clinton in 2008. With an electoral tidal wave sweeping Democrats out of power across the country last week, the left find themselves in need of happy thoughts.
This week, that happy thought is that “Hillary won the midterms,” her post-election vanishing act notwithstanding.
Although the electoral map will be daunting for Republicans in 2016, having to defend 24 of the 34 Senate seats up for election, the public mood will remain sour because President Obama’s narcissism prevents him from recognizing the degree to which the election was a referendum on him; his behavior, his petty tyranny, his abuse of executive branch authority, his single-minded political focus on hurting Republicans, will not change.
It will be challenging for Hillary Clinton to market herself as different enough from Barack Obama that the country would want to risk another four or eight years of political back-biting and dysfunction during a time of unmatched-in-recent-years peril to the civilized world. Indeed, the more that foreign policy remains in the headlines, the worse it is for Hillary “reset button” Clinton whose term as Secretary of State is notable only for how effectively she used it to stay away from her husband.
The next two years are a critical time for Republicans, who too often find ways to disappoint, to prove to the American public — once again willing to give them a try — that they deserve to hold the reins of power. Yes, even Republicans can learn, aided by sober-minded leadership but still guided by principle.
Their first step forward to victory in 2016 should be a strong performance in the 114thCongress. Then, despite the left’s current fantasy, the eventual Republican presidential nominee will be further boosted by the fact that the midterm elections harmed few people as much as they harmed Hillary Rodham Clinton.
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