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Just heard Williams was beheaded by NBC as well. In six months he will be back reporting NBC's version of the facts unless he becomes Obama's press secretary where he could really make news!
Apparently Williams makes $10 million/year so it is a $5 million hit. Just "chump" change!
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Rev Wright's negative views must have rubbed off on Obama as well as his close association with the White House's most respected alleged income tax cheat - Al Sharpton, bless their souls!. (See 1 below.)
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Before I get off my high horse "Random" apparently Netanyahu did alert the White House he was coming to speak before Congress. That said, what has been lost is the fact that Israel faces annihilation should Iran develop and launch a nuclear attack against it. America is threatened but not in an existential manner at this time. Therefore, if Obama were a 'mensch' he would not have reacted as he has but Obama is anything but a big man. He is a very small, arrogant man who happens to have a job that is too big for him.
Now, I just dis-mounted (got off) my high horse "Random" and am heading to a French Infi- deli. If I randomly meet some terrorists along the rue de la Juif, I am not going to tell them I am Jewish because I don't want to cause any confusion or angst for Obama. I'll just let them know I am "An American In Paris" and my name is Gene Kelly!
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From now on in order to be charged for a murderous crime you must know the name of the person your are killing. otherwise you will be charged with a random work place disturbance and if you are found guilty and go to jail you will be forced to write your victims name on the blackboard 1000 times!
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Earlier today I heard there is dissension among members of Hillary's Campaign Top Staff.. Apparently turf battle issues by those with over sized egos. I am sure these type occurrences know no party affiliation and simply reveal how important power and being close to power is for some. There is something in Potomac Water that brings out the worst in those who profess they want to serve us when what far too many are interested in is self service.
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Congress maneuvered into being the fall guy if and when Iran talks fail?
Meanwhile Iran is in violation but Obama cares not to challenge them because they could walk and he would be defeated in his desire to do a deal at virtually any cost. Obama seems willing to be played as a total chump. (See 2 below)
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Dick
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1) An Administration With a Blind Spot About Anti-Semitism
President Obama’s recent interview with Vox included an astonishing characterization of one of the most notorious recent terror attacks. As he did in his initial reaction to the assault on a kosher deli in Paris, the president did not call it an act of anti-Semitism or say that those slaughtered were singled out for murder because they were Jews. Even worse, he told Vox that those responsible for the attack on the Hyper Cacher had decided to “randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a Paris deli.” The day after such a glaring misstatement of fact, one might expect the White House to walk back this remark in some way. But, instead, both White House spokesman Josh Earnest and State Department spokesperson Jen Psakidoubled down on the president’s tortured logic in a stunning display of Orwellian doubletalk. Instead of just a president with a blind spot about anti-Semitism that comes out when he is interviewed, it is now clear that the United States has an administration with a blind spot about anti-Semitism.
To have made such a statement once might be just a gaffe. To do it twice revealed that the president has a blind spot about anti-Semitism that somehow prevents him from either admitting that the incident was anti-Semitic or condemning it as an incident in which Jews were targeted. But today we learned that this is not just a rhetorical tic. It is now official U.S. policy to claim that when Islamist murderers go into a kosher deli looking for Jews to kill, they are not targeting Jews or acting out of religious bias.
Earnest ‘s insistence that the Hyper Cacher was not chosen by the terrorists because of the likelihood that it would be filled with Jews shopping for the Sabbath is mind-boggling. So, too, is Psaki’s belief that calling it an act of anti-Semitism is a question so complex that only the local French authorities investigating the crime can know for sure.
Why the adamant refusal to label an unambiguous act of anti-Semitism what it is?
One reason is the natural resistance on the part of this administration to admit mistakes especially when the president commits them. President Obama is a notoriously thin-skinned individual who clings to the conceit that he understands every issue better than his critics. Few administrations like to concede they have erred but this one is particularly allergic to that type of transparency.
But this problem goes deeper than that.
This is an administration that is loath to say that Islamist terrorists represent a significant minority of adherents of their faith. Indeed, as I noted yesterday, this understandable desire to avoid casting the conflict as one of the West against Muslims has been exaggerated to the extent that the president now poses as the pope and claims that he has the authority to determine who does or does not reflect the true version of that faith.
But now apparently this reluctance to admit that Islamists terrorists are Muslims extends to refusing to say that Jewish victims were Jewish or that the killers were trying to kill Jews. In doing so, the administration seems to think that denying that it was an act of anti-Semitism will absolve it of any responsibility to speak up against Jew hatred or to acknowledge the way the virus of anti-Semitism has spread among Muslims.
It goes without saying that this controversy and the embarrassing lengths to which Obama’s whims required Earnest and Psaki to foreswear both logic and honesty were entirely unnecessary. Acknowledging the obvious anti-Semitic nature of the Hyper Cacher attack has no real policy implications. No one expects the administration to do anything about anti-Semitism except to condemn it. In fact any mention of the attack is not a trick question. It is a layup for the president who could easily pose as a defender of Jewish interests and an opponent of hate by merely saying he is appalled by the targeting of Jews in France or anywhere else. Obama and his mouthpieces could have done this easily without being roped into unwanted action or even expressing sympathy for Israel as a refuge against anti-Semitism. But though speaking out against anti-Semitism is a cost-free way of demonstrating both sensitivity and a zealous defense of human rights, it is apparently too much to ask of a president who feels free in his last two years in the White House to say and do as he likes.
But there is a cost attached to Obama’s refusal to speak about anti-Semitism and his firm orders to underlings to copy his oblivious stand. By that I do not refer to a political cost for Obama who will never again have to face an electorate, including an American Jewish community that gave him the lion’s share of their votes despite his obvious hostility to Israel. Instead it is the Jews of Europe, who continue to be targeted because of their faith amid what even Obama’s State Department termed a “rising tide of anti-Semitism,” who will pay the price for his refusal to speak the truth about violent Jew hatred.
Islamist terrorists and their state sponsors in Iran will not be slow to pick up on this signal from Washington that the Jews are on their own. If the president and his spin masters won’t speak about anti-Semitism, you can be sure that those ginning up these attacks and engaging in the most vile forms of delegitimization will interpret it as a sign that the U.S. isn’t interested in the fate of the Jews.
Were the president prepared to speak responsibly about terrorism he would do more than acknowledge that the Hyper Cacher was singled out because it was filled with Jews. He would, instead, connect the dots between these acts of terror and the hate spread by an Iranian regime that he is pursuing with offers of détente. But it is hardly surprising that a president who treats Israeli acts of self-defense against terror as an obstacle to his foreign policy goals would treat the siege of the Jews of Europe as beneath his notice.
An administration with a blind spot about anti-Semitism is one that is not only encouraging more such attacks. It is also demonstrating that is unready to defend anyone against an Islamist scourge that this president dares not call by its right name.
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2)
One of the more astounding features of the current controversy over the Iran nuclear negotiations is the extent to which Congress is being set up to take the blame if the talks go south. A Senate proposal to impose new sanctions on Iran — mind you, if and only if the parties fail to reach a comprehensive deal by a July deadline that they themselves set; and if and only if President Obama decides not to exercise his waiver authority because he’s unable to certify that progress is being made — has somehow become a mortal threat to world peace
2)
How Congress Became the
Fall Guy for Obama’s Iran Deal
· BY JOHN HANNAH
According to the president, himself, such deadline-triggered sanctions would be viewed by Iran and our international partners as a supreme act of bad faith. Sanctions would unravel. Iran would walk away from the table and accelerate its nuclear program. The risk of war would rise dangerously.
This campaign to demonize Congress is deeply troubling for any number of reasons. To name but a few:
Senior U.S. officials have acknowledged that prospective sanctions arguably wouldn’t violate the letter of the interim deal known as the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) — which prohibits the administration from imposing new sanctions during negotiations (versus after they expire), while explicitly recognizing Congress’s independent role under our Constitution. Instead, the administration points to the danger that, whatever the JPOA actually says, Iran and our international partners would perceive such legislation as a violation.
·
As Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) charged at a recent hearing, the president and his team are parroting Iran’s talking points. In essence, Obama is saying that if the Iranians bolt, or the Russians start violating the sanctions regime, they’ll be fully justified in doing so. For America’s commander-in-chief to endorse the Iranian narrative in this way is a terrible mistake, a negotiating faux pax that screams fear and desperation, and cedes crucial leverage to our adversaries. Whatever criticisms he has of the Senate proposal, the president should be relentlessly warning Tehran that nothing currently being considered by Congress would warrant a decision to collapse the talks — and should they choose to do so, they’ll suffer swift and painful repercussions from a unified American government.
· The president’s single-minded effort to paint Congress as the enemy of a diplomatic solution completely overlooks Iran’s serial transgressions against the so-called “spirit” of the JPOA. While he’s consumed with tarring America’s elected representatives as warmongers or political opportunists, Iran’s escalating pattern of truly dangerous, destructive, and deceptive behaviors has gone virtually unchallenged — or even worse has been excused away by administration officials.
Beyond the issue of the nuclear talks, Tehran has exploited Obama’s over-eagerness for a deal by going on a rampage across the Middle East to advance its hegemonic agenda and threaten U.S. allies.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have all but invaded Syria and Iraq — the latter with what amounts to an American blessing.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have all but invaded Syria and Iraq — the latter with what amounts to an American blessing. On the Golan Heights, they and their Hezbollah proxies are looking to establish a new base of operations on Israel’s borders. In Yemen, the former government — a critical U.S. counter-terrorism partner — has just been routed by Iranian-backed rebels. Yet good luck searching for a serious presidential word — much less any credible action — warning Iran off its current offensive. On the contrary, you’re far more likely to find him bleating on to some sympathetic journalist for helping the Islamic Republic fulfill its potential as “a very successful regional power.”
And then there’s the nuclear issue itself. Where to begin? Since the JPOA was agreed almost 15 months ago, Iran has methodically pushed every boundary, exploited every loophole, taken advantage of every oversight in the interim deal to advance its nuclear program. Even the short list is depressingly long.
Advanced Centrifuge R&D.
Iran continues its work to develop a series of next-generation centrifuges that, if ever operationalized, would dramatically shorten the time required to enrich bomb-grade uranium. Just before last November’s second extension of the JPOA, the IAEA revealed that Iran had for the first time repeatedly fed uranium gas into a new centrifuge, the IR-5 — a move arguably at odds with the interim accord, and one that Iran agreed to halt when challenged by the U.S. Along similar lines, several months earlier, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization boasted publicly that Iran was now actively engaged in work to develop its most advanced centrifuge yet, the IR-8, whose capacity to enrich uranium would in theory be 16 times greater than the IR-1s currently in use.
Illicit Procurement.
In a confidential report to the United Nations, the U.S. alleged last fall that Iran’s efforts to circumvent sanctions by procuring components for its nuclear program had continued despite the advent of the JPOA. In particular, there had been a significant increase in its efforts to circumvent sanctions with respect to parts for its plutonium-producing reactor at Arak.
Ballistic Missiles.
Iran has persisted in defying all efforts (and Security Council resolutions) to rein in its nuclear-capable ballistic missile program, the largest in the Middle East. Indeed, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has openly ridiculed calls to include Iran’s missile program in the nuclear talks as “stupid and idiotic” — a view to which U.S. negotiators quickly succumbed.
This despite the fact that Iran is developing longer-range systems, possibly including intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) capable of hitting the United States, that have little military logic unless coupled with a nuclear warhead; and despite the fact that the IAEA has strong evidence of past Iranian efforts to develop precisely such warheads.
Within weeks of the JPOA going into effect, Iran test-fired a long-range missile. It has continued illicit efforts to procure missile parts. New missilelaunch sites are being built. And just last week, an Iranian rocket carried Iran’s fourth satellite into space orbit, a development whose implications for a nuclear-tipped ICBM program have been obvious since the Soviets launched Sputnik nearly 60 years ago.
Weaponization.
Perhaps most alarmingly, there’s strong reason to believe that Iran’s efforts to militarize its nuclear program have continued to this day — the JPOA be damned. Last Aug. 29 — more than nine months after the interim accord was announced — the United States sanctioned an Iranian entity called the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research (and known by its Persian acronym, SPND). The accompanying State Department notice described SPND as “a Tehran-based entity that is primarily responsible for research in the field of nuclear weapons development.” SPND was apparently created in 2011 and is headed by Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, for almost two decades the single most important scientist in Iran’s quest to build a nuclear explosive device. Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, Fakhrizadeh headed up key elements of Iran’s clandestine research. After he and his covert program were publicly exposed and sanctioned over the last decade, a new entity, SPND, was established to ensure Iran’s undeclared nuclear work continued.
Remarkably, the revelation that Iran’s covert weaponization efforts appear to be ongoing — JPOA or not — has barely registered. You’ll be hard-pressed to find any detailed reporting on the SPND designation in a major American newspaper. During hours of recent congressional testimony on Iran, senior U.S. officials were asked but a single question about the implications of SPND’s continued work and got away with a cursory non-answer.
Nevertheless, when put together the evidence is quite jarring. The fact is that, under cover of the JPOA, Iran appears to be working systematically to advance all three of the elements essential to its nuclear weapons program: 1) the ability to enrich uranium to weapons-grade (by developing more powerful centrifuges); 2) a nuclear explosive device (SPND’s continued work); and 3) a delivery vehicle (the ballistic missile program). While President Obama and U.S. negotiators have been fixated on the bright shiny object of reducing Iran’s stockpile of 20 percent uranium, the Iranians have slowly but surely been using the breathing space provided by the interim deal to improve parts of their weapons program that aren’t yet quite up to snuff. What seems fairly clear is that in terms of sheer technical capability, Iran will be in better position to breakout or sneak out to a bomb in the aftermath of the JPOA than before it took effect.
The fact that none of this violates the letter of the interim deal speaks volumes about its inadequacies. The fact that none of it has moved the president to direct a word of public warning to Iran about its dangerous activities also speaks volumes about Obama’s underlying purpose in these negotiations. The pretense that this process was about compelling a rabidly anti-American theocracy that has been at war with America for the better part of four decades to take a strategic decision to surrender permanently its nuclear weapons ambitions (a la Libya or South Africa) is now out the window. In its place, what remains is the quixotic pursuit of some form of grand bargain, a rapprochement that — while leaving the bulk of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure in place — will somehow work over time to tame the Islamic Republic, transform international relations and secure Obama’s legacy as a visionary peacemaker.
That is the context for understanding the disturbing paradox we see today. On the one hand, an Iran on the march throughout the region, plotting terror attacks in the Western Hemisphere, and actively seeking to advance key elements of its nuclear program in the middle of a negotiation whose very purpose is to end that program — yet greeted with nary a word of serious opposition from the president of the United States. On the other hand, an increasingly anxious Congress contemplating a rear-guard action to increase U.S. leverage and stop Iran’s weapons program before it’s too late — smeared at every turn as warmongers and political opportunists, apparently posing the single greatest threat to peace in our time.
Something is indeed terribly amiss with this picture. Yet the prospects for correction at this late date seem, unfortunately, exceedingly dim. The president appears hell-bent on the course he has chosen and Congress, for all its valiant efforts over the years, looks poorly equipped to outmatch him in the head-to-head confrontation that he has forced. Is there a Scoop Jackson among them, or a Republican contender for 2016 with the chops to take the president on, sound the alarm and have the country respond? There’s no sign of them yet. As a result, while it may be true that nothing is written, it increasingly looks like Iran’s future as a nuclear-threshold state might be the next closest thing.
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