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"All those intelligent articles by wise men, they mean well but it amounts to nothing.
The bottom line is that we have an Islamist as a President, everybody is afraid to trumpet “the KING is naked” and he is determined in the next 2 years to destroy this amazing Country………..”and nobody is on the barricades”………………………
M--"
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Democrats running from Netanyahu.
They enjoy Jewish money but prefer Hispanic votes so Democrats are in a dilemma.
The radical element, which has taken over the Democrat Party, has begun pulling away their support of Israel, though a few suggest otherwise. Many Democrats no longer see the close relationship with Israel of any political value. Now that Obama has lost most relationships among America and Middle East Muslims there is no longer a need to have as close a relationship with Israel.
Burning bridges has political consequences. (See 1 below.)
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Unemployment rate is a fiction of Obama media spinmieiters. It all depends on how you spin. Correct figures do not lie, only politicians do and this president is one of the worst prevaricators in history.
Look at collective income of the middle class as one gauge. It is shrinking along with their numbers. (See 2 and 2a below.)
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This Senator has a valid point but , again, media dolts will not press the point he makes. Obama is simply being political when it comes to Guantanamo. Great campaign fluff Obama now feels compelled to insure happens just as is the case with barring an energy pipeline and opposing energy independence by castigating fracking.
Tom Cotton puts these guys on the hot seat. Maybe another Trey Gowdy?
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Obama has displayed a pitiful knowledge of U.S. History. He recently had George Washington engaged in a prisoner swap that never took place because of at the wrong time, during the campaign he did not know the number of states and does not care, if he even has studied our Constitution, the relationship the president has with Congress and most specifically The Senate on treaty matters.
The fact that he allegedly tutored students as a Constitutional Law Professor makes the supposition he understands the Constitution more laughable.
Obama's knowledge of Islam seems to guide his every decision notwithstanding Davis Hanson's recent op ed which I posted. (See 3 and 3a below.)
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Obama has displayed a pitiful knowledge of U.S. History. He recently had George Washington engaged in a prisoner swap that never took place because of at the wrong time, during the campaign he did not know the number of states and does not care, if he even has studied our Constitution, the relationship the president has with Congress and most specifically The Senate on treaty matters.
The fact that he allegedly tutored students as a Constitutional Law Professor makes the supposition he understands the Constitution more laughable.
Obama's knowledge of Islam seems to guide his every decision notwithstanding Davis Hanson's recent op ed which I posted. (See 3 and 3a below.)
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Dick
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1)Biden to Snub Netanyahu, Skip Speech to Congress: Official
Now comes the backlash to the Bibi backlash.
Republican and conservative Jewish organizations are threatening shaming campaigns against Democrats who skip Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned speech to a joint meeting of Congress next month. Even talking about not showing, they say, is forsaking America’s relationship with Israel.
Joe Biden apparently isn't worried. A spokesperson for the vice president on Friday said Biden would not preside over the joint meeting because he'll be travelling abroad.
The furor around the speech, which Democrats say is forcing them to choose between loyalty to Israel and loyalty to their party, reflects a slow transformation. Though the overwhelming majority of American Jewish voters remain Democrats, Jewish Republicans have grown in numbers and influence. That’s a trend conservative Israeli politicians, led by Netanyahu, are seeking to use to their advantage—and a small number of well-funded right-leaning American Jews are eager to exploit.
The dispute centers around an agreement between House Speaker John Boehner and Israeli ambassador Ron Dermer for Netanyahu to use the speech to address what he sees as the dangers of a U.S. rapprochment with Iran. The Obama administration, which is deep in negotiations with the Islamic state over curbing its nuclear program, sees the speech as an attempt to make it harder for U.S. lawmakers to support the diplomatic effort by portraying it as a direct threat to Israel. Netanyahu says doesn’t trust Iran to abide by any deal and thinks U.S. diplomats are being naive. Democrats, by contrast, see a verifiable agreement that removes Iran’s nukes as increasing Israel’s security.
The fact that neither Boehner nor Dermer cleared the speech first with the White House, and that it comes just two weeks before Israeli elections was seen by the administration and senior Democrats as particularly manipulative. Footage of Netanyahu being applauded by the U.S. Congress and railing against Iran couldn’t help but bolster his image just before voters decide whether to keep his Likud party in power, they say.
Both sides are accusing the other of excessive partisanship. Democrats say that Boehner politicized the speech by inviting Netanyahu behind the White House’s back. Republicans say it’s actually the Democrats who’ve made things worse by threatening not to be there for a key ally just to settle a score with Boehner.
Either way, most observers of American-Israeli relations say Netanyahu and his aides appear to have misread Washington politics even more seriously than his not-so-subtle attempt to rally support behind Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election. Privately, diplomats and Democrats in Congress scoff at the Israeli government’s claim that they were caught off guard by how partisan the situation has became. Democratic leaders are pushing for Netanyahu to reconsider, or cancel the speech altogether.
But as of now, the speech still looks like it’s going forward, and the Republican Jewish Coalition will be taking attendance.
“This is, I think a critical visit by the prime minister. If these Democrats would rather put partisan politics ahead of principle and walk out on the prime minister of Israel, then we have an obligation to make that known,” said Matt Brooks, the executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition.
Brooks wouldn’t specify what methods this shaming campaign would use, but he promised that his group would do what it could. And since it’s backed in part by billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who’s led efforts to connect Republican politics to support of Israel, there’s at least an implicit threat to use his funds to draw attention in the districts and home states of any member who’s not in the chamber to listen to Netanyahu on March 3. Aides to Adelson did not respond to requests for comment.
“We will commit whatever resources we need to make sure that people are aware of the facts, that given the choice to stand with Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu in opposition to a nuclear Iran, they chose partisan interests and to stand with President Obama,” Brooks said.
Other groups are sending similar messages.
“We will, of course, be publicly condemning any Democrats who don’t show up for the speech—unless they have a doctor’s note,” said Mort Klein, president of the 30,000-member Zionist Organization of America. “It’s really an anti-American, anti-patriotic position to take.”
AIPAC, the largest U.S. pro-Israel lobby that’s officially nonpartisan but often seen as leaning right, is encouraging members of Congress to attend the speech. But the group has been largely silent about the controversy to this point.
An AIPAC spokesman declined comment on plans around the speech. Netanyahu is scheduled to deliver a separate speech to the AIPAC annual conference in Washington as part of the same trip.
Congress can argue about whether Boehner and Netanyahu violated protocol, but Democrats have no choice to show now, argued former George W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer.
“Whether that’s true or not, what difference does it make? At this point, the prime minister is coming. Are you really going to boycott him?” Fleischer said.
Fleischer predicted that most Democrats will ultimately show for the speech. But if they don’t, he said they’ll be succumbing to political pressure from their liberal base that will lead to more partisan discord in the America-Israel relationship.
“If they boycott the speech, they’ll be casting their lot with the more liberal, not pro-Israel base of the party, and that would be a shocking development. It would be a radical break,” Fleischer said.
Rep. Lee Zeldin, a freshman from New York who’s currently the only Jewish Republican in Congress, said he believes the only reason Democrats are voicing concern about the speech is to give President Barack Obama cover.
“There really isn’t any debate as to what the right decision is,” Zeldin said.
“Israel is our strongest ally, and in an area of the world that is facing the rising tide of radical Islamic extremism and state sponsors of terrorism in pursuit of nuclear capability,” Zeldin said. “It really should be a no-brainer to warmly embrace the leader of Israel, no matter who that person is ever, without missing a beat.”
Comments like these inflame an already tense Hill even more. Told that Republicans are now blaming Democrats for turning Netanyahu’s visit partisan, Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.)—who hosted a meeting between Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer and seven Jewish Democratic lawmakers Wednesday morning where all said they weren’t planning to boycott, but wanted a way out—called this ridiculous Republican spin.
“Partisan hackery of this nature doesn’t deserve a response and is beneath the dignity of the bipartisan nature of U.S.-Israeli relations,” Israel said.
The threats of punishment don’t have many Democrats worried. Though some left-leaning Jewish leaders have also warned of the unpredictable politics of actually going through with skipping the speech, Hill Democrats say they’re confident that most reaction will continue to be defined by seeing the invitation as a transparent ploy by Boehner and Netanyahu.
And though they’re aware of just how big the checks are that pro-Republican and pro-Netanyahu forces can say they’ll write, they’re not worried about losing support from Democrats, independents or most American Jews.
“Our members who are staunchly pro-Israel, who go out there every day and talk about this, are against this,” said a senior House aide.
The aide predicted that though a number of Democrats will skip the speech — either out of protest, or because of scheduling conflicts — any Democrats who might be vulnerable to public punishment campaign would likely make the decision to attend anyway.
“I don’t know what the base of appeal is for such [a shaming] attack,” the aide said. “It’s the people who already agree with them already, which is obviously a small number of people in every district. …
It’s a waste of money, but go for it.”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2)CEO of Gallup calls jobless rate 'big lie' created by White House, Wall Street, media
The chairman of the venerable Gallup research and polling firm says the official U.S. unemployment rate is really an underestimation and a “big lie" perpetuated by the White House, Wall Street and the media.
What CEO and Chairman Jim Clifton revealed in his blog Tuesday about how the Labor Department arrives at the monthly unemployment rate is no secret -- including that Americans who have quit looking for work after four weeks are not included in the survey.
The department's current rate of 5.6 percent unemployment is the lowest since June 2008, with President Obama using his State of the Union address and campaign-style stops across the country to tout an economic recovery.
“Our economy is growing and creating jobs at the fastest pace since 1999,” Obama said in the opening lines of his January 20 address before Congress.“Our unemployment rate is now lower than it was before the financial crisis.”
Clifton says the “cheerleading” for the 5.6 number is “deafening.”
“The media loves a comeback story,” he writes. “The White House wants to score political points, and Wall Street would like you to stay in the market.”
Since the start of the Great Recession, which economists largely agree began in late 2007, the unemployment rate peaked at 10 percent in October 2009 and finally got under 6 percent in September 2014.
Clifton says Americans out of work for at least four weeks are “as unemployed as one can possibly be” and argues that as many as 30 million of them are now either out of work or severely underemployed.
He points out that an out-of-work engineer, for example, performing a minimum of one hour of work a week, even mowing a lawn for $20, also is not officially counted as unemployed.
In addition, those working part time but wanting full-time work -- the so-called “severely underemployed” -- also are not counted.
“There's no other way to say this,” Clifton says. “The official unemployment rate … amounts to a big lie.”
His arguments are similar to those made by Washington Republicans after the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced the rate each month during the height of the recession.
However, Gallup is an 80-year-old, nonpartisan firm.
The bureau did not return a request for comment.
Clifton suggests the biggest misconception about the official rate is that it doesn’t denote “good” full-time jobs.
“When the media, talking heads, the White House and Wall Street start reporting the truth -- the percent of Americans in good jobs; jobs that are full time and real -- then we will quit wondering why Americans aren't ‘feeling’ something that doesn't remotely reflect the reality in their lives. And we will also quit wondering what hollowed out the middle class,” he said.
2a)The Jobs Report Isn't Worthy of the Praise It's Getting
2a)The Jobs Report Isn't Worthy of the Praise It's Getting
By JOHN MERLINE
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
"Jobs report crushes it." "The streak continues." "It's raining jobs!" "That's great news." "This is a great jobs report across the board."
From the tone of these headlines, and many others like them, you'd think the economy added a million jobs last month, instead of 257,000.
That's not to say that the January gain isn't a nice number. And it follows a couple months of strong employment gains late last year (which the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised upward).
But it's hardly spectacular, and definitely not worthy of these sorts of over-the-top exclamations.
After all, the average monthly increase in jobs during the first six years of the Reagan recovery was 252,000. And that was when the working-age population was 28% smaller than it is today.
And in the 84 months from 1993 through 1999, monthly gains topped 257,000 more than
half the time.
Plus, as we've reported here many times, it will take a lot more than increases of 257,000 to soak up all the workers left idle during the anemic Obama recovery.
Think about it this way. Obama likes to brag that there have now been 51 months of uninterrupted monthly job gains, which have resulted in 10.3 million new jobs.
Sounds impressive, doesn't it?
But over that same period, the working-age population increased by 11.2 million. By that measure, the country has actually lost ground over the past four-plus years.
That's why the labor force participation rate is just 62.9%, even with jobs "raining" down last month, which is much lower than the 65.7% rate at the start of the Obama recovery, and even down from where it was early last year.
Gallup CEO Jim Clifton gave the proper context for the jobs report, telling Fox News that: "The number of full-time jobs, and that's what everybody wants, as a percent of the total population, is the lowest it's ever been...In the recession we lost 13 million jobs. Only 3 million have come back. You don't see that in that number."
Given the context, it seems a bit premature to start uncorking the champagne bottles because of one, or even a few, decent months of job gains.
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3) The Senate and Iran’s Bomb
The ghost of Scoop Jackson is hovering over the Obama Administration’s trouble with the Senate and its nuclear negotiations with Iran. Senator Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson, a respected national-security Democrat from Washington state, was often a thorn in the side of Presidents who were negotiating arms-control agreements with the Soviet Union in the 1970s. President Obama wishes Senate critics such as Democrat Robert Menendezand Republican Bob Corker would simply get their noses out of the deal. This President needs a history lesson: Senate involvement in arms-control agreements goes back at least 50 years.
3) The Senate and Iran’s Bomb
Obama rejects a role for Congress that it has long played on arms control.
The ghost of Scoop Jackson is hovering over the Obama Administration’s trouble with the Senate and its nuclear negotiations with Iran. Senator Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson, a respected national-security Democrat from Washington state, was often a thorn in the side of Presidents who were negotiating arms-control agreements with the Soviet Union in the 1970s. President Obama wishes Senate critics such as Democrat Robert Menendezand Republican Bob Corker would simply get their noses out of the deal. This President needs a history lesson: Senate involvement in arms-control agreements goes back at least 50 years.
Threatening vetoes of anything the Senate sends him on Iran, President Obama seems to think his job is to negotiate nuclear arms agreements unilaterally, while the Senate’s job is to keep its mouth shut.
It was never thus.
The idea of nuclear-arms agreements negotiated by an Administration with little or no input from Congress is a relatively recent phenomenon. The Clinton Administration unilaterally negotiated the 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea to stop its construction of nuclear reactors. The George W. Bush Administration followed, producing five sets of Six-Party Talks with North Korea. They all fell apart because the North Koreans cheated by continuing to test nuclear devices and develop missiles capable of delivering a bomb.
The Obama negotiation with Iran is called P5+1, which asks everyone to believe that the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany, can be trusted to put Iran’s nuclear genie to sleep. That arms-control model may appeal to the Nobel Peace Prize committee, but it should not impress U.S. Senators.
The Senate’s experience with nuclear-arms control dates at least to the Kennedy Presidency in 1963 and the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which emerged after eight years of negotiations with the Soviet Union. Like virtually all Soviet-era arms agreements, that deal was a formal treaty and subject to the Constitution’s treaty-making process: The President may commit the U.S. to a treaty with the advice and consent of two-thirds of the Senate. The Senate ratified the Kennedy test ban 80-19.
With a few exceptions, that public process was followed for decades. The agreements were openly debated by Senators with input, pro and con, by national-security specialists from inside and outside the government.
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was negotiated during the Johnson Presidency and ratified under Richard Nixon in 1969. Nixon then undertook negotiations for the first Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I). That produced the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which the Senate ratified 88-2. SALT I never became a formal, permanent treaty. It was a temporary deal, lasting five years, and Nixon submitted it to Congress for approval by votes in both the Senate and House.
President Obama’s Iran deal sounds like Nixon’s temporary interim SALT accord. But while Nixon understood the need to get Congress’s formal approval, the Obama White House refuses to note even the existence of Mr. Corker’s proposed up-or-down vote on an Iran deal.
When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 and amid the Iranian hostage crisis, President Carter withdrew the SALT II treaty with the Soviets, knowing the Senate would never ratify it. During the Reagan years, Senators were preoccupied with nuclear verification and compliance. How, the Senators asked, would we know if the Soviets were cheating, and what would we do about it if they did cheat?
As the Reagan team pressed in 1987 for ratification of the INF treaty on medium-range nuclear weapons, Senator Sam Nunn, then the Democratic chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said, “We are going to have a major debate on verification, in the context of both this agreement and the next one.” Leading national-security figures testified in hearings, all of it covered and debated in major newspapers and television. It was a valuable exercise in American governance. The Senate ratified INF in May 1988, 93-5.
George H.W. Bush concluded the START treaty on longer-range nuclear weapons in 1991, which the Senate also ratified, as it did START II in 1996 under Bill Clinton.
Barack Obama’s Iran project is the outlier in the history of arms control. His insistence that no one may interfere in his negotiations has only increased misgivings in Congress about the details. If Mr. Obama were pursuing the traditional route to gain approval of an Iran agreement, exposing it to formal public debate and a vote, there would have been no need for Speaker John Boehner to invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress.
Details matter. The Defense Intelligence Agency in its annual threat assessment last February said, “In addition to its growing missile and rocket inventories, Iran is seeking to enhance lethality and effectiveness of existing systems with improvements in accuracy and warhead designs.”
Missile delivery systems and warhead design were make-or-break issues during arms agreements with the Soviet Union. In Mr. Obama’s negotiations with Iran, they are virtually non-subjects.
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Senators Menendez, Corker and Mark Kirk have led the effort for more accountability on an Iranian arms deal. President Obama’s response is a threat to veto any advice or consent the Senate may enact that doesn’t simply assent to whatever he signs. What an irony that his unilateral point man is former Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry .
This new Senate needs to re-establish its traditional role in letting the American people know what is in—and what is not in—these deals with the next generation of nations seeking nuclear bombs.
3a)A LITTLE HISTORY LESSON. MOST OF US ALREADY KNOW THIS. ALL OF US SHOULD.
You may recall that a few weeks ago, President Obama spoke of three former Presidents making prisoner swaps at the end of wars that took place on their watch, "much like this swap" he said convincingly.
CNN News carried this quote, “This is what happens at the end of wars,” President Barack Obama boasted Tuesday when he was asked about swapping an American Army Sgt. Deserter for five vicious Taliban terrorists. "That was true for George Washington... That was true for Abraham Lincoln and that was true for FDR. That’s been true of every combat situation, that at some point, you make sure that you try to get your folks back... And that’s the right thing to do.”
Really?
That statement blatantly demonstrates that the most powerful man in the World and two term President of the United States lacks even a grade school level of knowledge of American History; specifically, history as it relates to three of our most famous presidents and it demonstrates again that we have essentially elected a foreigner who has no understanding of the very country that he reigns supreme over. Then again, he was educated at an Ivy league school so you can't expect too much.
What's wrong with his statements? Let's keep it simple-- EVERYTHING is wrong!
George Washington did not become president until six years after the Revolutionary War ended in 1783. By 1789 there were no longer any prisoners for him to exchange.
FDR died of a stroke before the end of WWII. Like Lincoln, he stayed dead after the war so he couldn't do what this jerk says he did. You'll recall that Harry S. Truman made the decision to drop two nuclear bombs on Japan, ending World War II. He made no deals for prisoners.
None of the Presidents that Obama noted were in office at the ends of those wars, making it impossible for them to make any sort of prisoner swaps, let alone the 5 for 1, plus unspecified cash, for a deserter and traitor by our "57 States" president.
It should be pointed out that many deserters and traitors were shot or hung during all three of the aforementioned wars. What amazes one even more than the ignorance of the President is that he has managed to surround himself with a staff that is just as clueless.
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