Is another Pearl Harbour in our future and will it have been allowed to happen because Obama both lied and failed to act? (See 1a- 1c below.)
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I generally do not like going to the same movie twice and never three or more times. Grandma Hillary must be betting people like re-runs or are willing to watch remakes!
I once encouraged my wife to watch Jimmy Stewart's epic "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington." I watched it with her and realized, from just a technical standpoint, it was outdated. Even the direction and acting was hackneyed by current standards and methods. I suspect the same will be the case when Grandma gets going. All those face lifts do not change the fact that Hillary is yesterday.
Lately, it seems some major pundits and op writers are stealing my material. Now Maureen Dowd. (See 2 below.)
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Israeli Left coming out against Obama! Is the rug being pulled out from under the J Street Jerks? (See 3 below.)
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Marco Rubio announced yesterday he is running to become the Republican nominee for the high office of president.
He told the audience he is for the future and he alluded to the fact that Hillary is yesterday.
It takes a great deal of personal courage and even some arrogance to seek the office of president when one has about as much experience as does the bumbler who currently occupies the office.
There is a difference between Rubio and Obama, however. Rubio's past is not one of privilege whereas Obama's was greased by the slickness of affirmative action mixed with the sympathy of his race.
Rubio also claims his state and federal legislative experience is considerable whereas Obama's was minute.
There is a second aspect that separates Rubio and Obama. The word sincerity.
Time will tell whether this forty some year old can convince voters he is a far better choice than Grandma!
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This was sent to me by a dear friend and fellow memo reader.
I never knew my friend was religious and read the Bible! (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1) China-US: Avoiding the ‘Improbable War’
A recent diplomatic episode shows that this is a lesson the U.S. remains uninterested in learning. As readers of The Diplomat will know, in 2010, the IMF, with the support of the Obama Administration, passed a series of reforms that would shift member quota shares (and voting rights) to reflect the dynamics of a changing world economy, especially the economic growth of the BRICS grouping (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa). For the past five years, the U.S. Congress has refused to ratify the IMF reform because many Republicans are generally dubious about international financial cooperation and because they fear it would give China more influence while decreasing U.S. influence (the second argument is prima facie spurious, as America would still remain the only member state with veto powers). As a result of Republican intransigence on the question of reform, the IMF is becoming less relevant to world economic cooperation. This has led IMF chief Christine Lagarde to proclaim “I will do belly-dancing if that’s what it takes to get the US to ratify.” But not even that threat was able to sell reform to the Republican Senate.
This episode is telling because it reverses the narrative the U.S. has created about China’s rise. Since 2005 the U.S. has constantly pressured China to become a “responsible stakeholder.” U.S. President Barack Obama has accused China of being a global “free rider.” But as IMF reform makes clear, the U.S. – or more precisely, large political blocs within the U.S. – doesn’t actually want to share a stake of its power with China: It likes the division of world power the way it is and sees no reason to allow any change. China is rising. Rather than adjust structures and relationships to this reality, it is nicer to pretend nothing needs to change.
But the world is changing. Its bid for integration rejected, China has begun constructing its own system to run parallel to the U.S.-built system. In 2014 the BRICS nations, which comprise 3 billion people and around 20 percent of world GDP, launched their own $100 billion New Development Bank. Also in 2014, China launched an Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), another $100 billion institution. More than 50 nations have applied to join the AIIB so far according to the Global Times, and more will in the future, as Asia needs $8 trillion in infrastructure investment this decade alone. Regional and global enthusiasm for China’s initiative peeved the U.S., which pressured its allies not to join the bank. It has now become clear that this pressure has failed spectacularly. Ignoring U.S. protests, Britain announced it would join. France, Germany, and Italy quickly followed suit (later followed by South Korea and Australia), provoking a cry of outrage from a “senior US official” who insisted, “We are wary about a trend toward constant accommodation of China, which is not the best way to engage a rising power.”
It is this belief that brings us to the newly published book The Improbable War: China, The United States and Logic of Great Power Conflict by London School of Economics international relations professor Christopher Coker. Coker’s thesis is straightforward: War between China and the U.S. “is not inevitable, but nor is it as improbable as many experts suggest.” He argues that the kind of American attitude displayed above makes war more likely and that the leaders on both sides of the Pacific need to think carefully about the lessons of two other seemingly improbable wars in order to preserve peace today.
AD 1914 & BC 431
Why do historical analogies matter? Coker’s view of history mirrors that of the great historian John Lukacs: History cannot teach us what to do, but it can show us what to avoid doing. No analogy is exact, but if history really does rhyme, then studying it can reveal some lessons in meter and form. In this spirit he writes, “If we are fated to always speculate about the future we are also fated to recall the past and the historical analogy that would seem most pertinent as we try to understand how Chinese-US relations might evolve remains that of the First World War.”
The main lesson Coker derives from WWI is the danger of optimistically assuming war is unlikely. He extensively critiques Norman Angell’s belief that war was irrational, though not always convincingly. But his principal point cannot be questioned: “just because something is irrational does not mean it cannot happen.” Coker agrees with Christopher Clark’s recent magisterial telling of WWI in which Europe’s leaders sleepwalked into war. To this account he adds that the optimism that war was not probable allowed Europe’s leaders to ignore the tensions in the system, allowing disagreements to fester. When the crisis finally broke out in July 1914, no great power sought to manage it. As a result, war came.
The second analogy Coker considers is that of the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC), the ancient fratricide between Athens and Sparta that ended the Athenian Golden Age. The Peloponnesian War matters both because it has an important lesson to teach and because that lesson is often misunderstood. Consider the 2012 remarks of Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:
Well, first of all, I think it’s probably worth mentioning where I see our future with China. I mean, we’re bouncing – we’re bouncing ourselves back into the Pacific. That’s not a containment strategy for China. In fact, I don’t know how many of you study history, but Thucydides, the Greek historian, described what he called the “Thucydides Trap,” and it goes something like this: It was Athenian fear of a rising Sparta that made war inevitable.Well, I think that one of my jobs as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and as an adviser to our senior leaders is to help avoid a “Thucydides Trap.” We don’t want the fear of that emerging China to make war inevitable. So Thucydides – we’re going to avoid “Thucydides Trap.” And I think there’s more opportunities than liabilities for us in the Pacific.
Though it is a welcome occurrence for a figure as important as General Dempsey to consider the lessons of history, as a simple matter of fact he confused the position of Athens and Sparta: it wasn’t a “rising Sparta” that was at issue but a rising Athens. Thucydides’ famous line is “The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon, made war inevitable” (Thucydides 1.23). But either way, this sentence of Thucydides is often taken to be the final explanation for the war: a shift in power caused fear, making war became inevitable.
Coker eloquently remedies this highly simplified reading of Thucydides, arguing that the actual lesson of Thucydides is: Do not allow your state to be manipulated into war. This accords with the story Thucydides actually tells: Neither Athens nor Sparta sought war, but somehow war came. Athens was convinced by another city-state, Corcyra, to protect it from the interference of a Spartan ally, Corinth. The Corinthians then convinced the Spartans to intervene on their side against the rapacious Athenians, and thus a “war like no other” began. A shift in power may or may not have been a necessary condition for the Peloponnesian War. But the way in which Athens and Sparta were manipulated by their lesser allies surely was.
The Path to a US-China War
Are the U.S. and China walking the road to war today? Insofar as the U.S. insists that the status quo should not be adjusted, and insofar as China seeks assertively to change the status quo, Coker thinks the answer is yes. This is what he means by the title of his book. War is certainly not inevitable, but two questions Coker asks should worry statesmen in both countries: “Can China accept and continue to negotiate with a country that wants the Chinese regime to change and considers any government model but its own largely illegitimate? Can the United States deal constructively with a China which is so resentful of its past and confident about its future?”
Chinese leaders seemingly understand the potential danger their nation’s rapidly rising power poses for the stability of the global system and have, because of the lessons of history, proposed constructing a “new model of major country relations” with the U.S. According to Coker, American leaders and scholars have responded to this call with either hostility or consternation. Hostility because the U.S. would prefer not to think of China as its equal, and consternation because the Chinese have not been able to specify of what their requested “innovations in diplomatic theory and practice” would consist.
Where does this leave the U.S. and China in regards to the path to war? “The precondition of a Sino-American war is most likely to be the rivalry between a dominant power and one that seeks to take its place; the precipitant, China’s attempts to undermine the relationship between the U.S. and its allies/client states; but the trigger could well be naval spats, bullying that goes too far.” In short, though 2015 is a very different – and in most ways better – time than 1914, many of the conditions for conflict are currently present. U.S.-China competition has been obviously present since the 1995-6 Taiwan Straits Crisis. Since 2010 China has been seen as growing more “assertive.” In 2011 the U.S. “pivoted” to Asia, a concentrated political, economic, and military effort to contain China’s growing power in all but name. Nationalism is on the rise in China and Japan, and it is imaginable that a dispute between these two countries over rocks in the East China Sea, fueled by nationalism and historical antagonism, could cause a crisis that forced the U.S. either to escalate a conflict with China or surrender its so-called “credibility.” Obama has already drawn a red line by stating the U.S.-Japan defense treaty covers the Senkaku islands. What would happen if China were to put the line to the test like Assad did in Syria? Would the pressure of American hawks be too much to resist a second time?
The Path to a US-China Peace
Yet if there is a path to war, there is also a path to peace in East Asia. Though it is not a popular position today, Coker believes that if U.S. is serious about avoiding war then it must negotiate with China to revise the current international system. “All the lessons of history suggest that the US needs to share the burden with China if both countries are to avoid a conflict; the two sides urgently need to enter into a dialogue to also decide which if any of the ‘rules’ need to be changed.” What specifically does this mean? Coker provides only the hint of an answer: What would the U.S. think if China stationed crack soldiers in Venezuela, established bases around America’s continental and maritime periphery, conducted maritime intelligence patrols just outside of America’s 12-mile territorial waters, and negotiated a massive new trade deal that included all the major regional states except the U.S.? Undoubtedly America’s leaders would not tolerate this. In any new negotiated system, it is this sort of behavior Americans will have to eliminate.
More broadly, Coker suggests six ideas for moving the U.S. and China down the road to peace. Both sides should place less faith in the regional actor model of political decision-making; they should realize that humans are not good at deciding what is in their best interest and often make mistakes; the two nations should conduct cultural dialogues and exchanges; they should avoid a naval arms race like the one that preceded the Great War; neither side should militarize space; and both sides must think carefully about cyberwar so as not to be caught by surprise in the event of a conflict.
Is It Enough?
Coker thinks the U.S. and China have a 50/50 chance of avoiding war. Needless to say, this is not an optimistic projection and not one that makes war sound particularly “improbable.” Consider Coker’s explanation for how, while reflecting on the Great War, he came up with the criteria for what makes a war “improbable”:
Jack Beatty, one of the leading figures in the ‘new school’ of historians, distinguishes three stances with regard to the origins of the war—avoidable, improbable and inevitable. War would only have been ‘avoidable’ if the political leaders had set out to do everything in their power to avoid it. They did not do so, in part because they thought it so unlikely. War would only have been ‘improbable’ if they realized how only remarkable crisis management skills could have kept the continent at peace given the tinder box nature of European politics. It therefore follows that war was largely ‘inevitable’ because the politicians did not take the prospect of war seriously enough.
Though Coker does not make this connection, this threefold division corresponds nicely to the three ways to manage conflict. You can (1) resolve the issues in dispute through negotiation and compromise, therefore eliminating the cause of conflict; (2) work to control conflict by creating crisis management protocols and practices, therefore working to ensure a crisis does not become a war; or (3) you can reduce the consequences of a war through arms control and the spread of norms, therefore (hopefully) lessening the lethality of war when it breaks out. Within elite American circles today, almost all emphasis is placed on the second option: crisis management. During the U.S.-Soviet Cold War, emphasis was also placed on the third option. Option two can only make war “improbable” while option three can only reduce the consequences of war. War can only be made avoidable if both the U.S. and China pursue option one: Working to overcome the disagreements that are the cause of contemporary friction by negotiating a new great power consensus.
Making war avoidable should not be dismissed as a utopian pursuit. The U.S. has chosen to be a colossus that bestrides the world and says stop. But nothing forces it to adopt this position. Realizing that history does indeed wander off on its own, that power shifts, that the status quo cannot be enshrined as holy, and that it is time to build a new consensus with China would permit American statesmen to begin stepping off the road to war and onto the road to peace. If you are unconvinced of these points, I suggest you read Coker’s book. If you are convinced, it is time to move to the next stage of the argument: How should a new consensus be built? Upon what principles should it rest? Does history offer any examples of great-power cooperation that could become models for constructing such a new consensus today? The precondition for making war avoidable instead of improbable is answering these questions.
Jared McKinney is a dual-degree graduate student at Peking University and the London School of Economics and holds an M.S. (with distinction) in Defense and Strategic Studies from Missouri State University, where he was a Rumsfeld Graduate Fellow.
1a)
Iran Says US Conceded on All Its Red Lines in Nuclear Deal
by Dalit Halevy, Ari Yashar
Iranian leadership continues to state clearly that the framework deal announced in Lausanne, Switzerland earlier this month constitutes a major achievement of the Islamic regime, which didn't give up on its nuclear program at all and forced the US to fold.
Iranian Revolutionary Guards chief General Mohammed Ali Jafari, who is considered to be one of the most influential men in Tehran, said that Iran's enemies tried to cause a change in the regime's policy through the negotiations and sanctions, but those efforts were in vain.
Jafari stated that the US in practice conceded to all of the red lines of Iran regarding its controversial nuclear program.
The Iranian military leader emphasized that no obligating agreement has yet been sealed between Iran and world powers regarding the nuclear program, and there are differences of opinion in terms of the removal of sanctions that are still liable to prevent a final agreement.
Iran has demanded that all sanctions be removed immediately with the signing of an agreement, while world powers have called for a gradual removal to try and ensure Iran keeps its word in reducing its uranium production - but not stopping it, or closing any of its nuclear facilities.
Jafari accused the US of "fraud" and "psychological warfare" in publishing a fact sheet announcing what the US claims was agreed on in the framework deal, which Jafari called a false translation. He said the US did so to deceive its allies regarding the scope of the deal.
Top Iranian officials said last Tuesday that they will start using advanced IR-8 centrifuges that are 20-times as effective as standard ones as soon as a deal is reached, meaning they would be able to produce a nuclear arsenal in a rapid timeframe.
US President Barack Obama likewise admitted in an interview last week that as a result of the deal, Iran will be able to reach a "zero" breakout time by 2028, meaning it could produce nuclear weapons immediately whenever it wanted to.
It has also been noted that the US changed its goal to a one-year window for nuclear breakout, after shelving original demands to dismantle significant parts of Iran's nuclear program when faced with strong Iranian opposition. The US management of the deal has been criticized by many, including fame
1b0 Iran Lets Khamenei Call Shots on Iran Deal
by Tova Dvorin
The June 30, 2015 deadline for a final nuclear agreement between the P5+1 powers and Iran is subject to the whims of the Iranian Supreme Leader, Tehran has announced.
“Iran will work hard to reach an agreement within the specified time of three months or even sooner, but if the deal doesn’t meet the criteria the leader has introduced for a good deal, we would extend the time,” Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi stated on public television on Friday, according to Mehr news agency.
The "leader" in question is Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic who is known for his extremism and Islamism - and who is also responsible for the glut of Iran's decision-making.
Khamenei made his first-ever public statement about the deal on Thursday, in which he denied Iran will follow the agreement at all.
“Everything done so far neither guarantees an agreement in principle nor its contents, nor does it guarantee that the negotiations will continue to the end,” he said.
The statements are the latest in a series of discrepancies between what the West has presented to the world media regarding the Iranian nuclear deal and Iran's version of events.
Differing accounts of what the deal entails have been published between the US, Europe, and Iran, with each version providing drastic variations on the deal's content.
Iranian Revolutionary Guards chief General Mohammed Ali Jafari, who is considered to be one of the most influential men in Tehran, stated publicly Saturday night that the US conceded all of its red lines in negotiating the deal - despite the US's draft of the agreement stating otherwise.
Days earlier, US President Barack Obama admitted that as a result of the deal, Iran will be able to reach a "zero" breakout time by 2028, meaning it could produce nuclear weapons immediately whenever it wanted to.
1c )US Admits N. Korea, Maybe Iran, Can Now Target it with EMP-Nukes
by Mark Langfan
In a blockbuster admission, Admiral Bill Gortney, Commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and US Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) disclosed that the Pentagon now believes North Korea has mastered the ability to miniaturize its nuclear bombs so they can be fitted onto their latest mobile KN-08 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), which are capable of reaching the continental United States.
At the news conference, Adm. Gortney flatly stated, Pyongyang has “the ability to put a nuclear weapon on a KN-08 and shoot it at the homeland [the continental United States].” He expressed confidence that the US could knock down such a missile if launched by North Korea or its ally, Iran.
He also admitted, however, that it is “very difficult” for the US to counter the threat, because its intelligence is unable to follow the mobile ICBMs and give an efficient warning before they are launched.
The admission was accompanied by the announcement that NORAD is reopening its nuclear-EMP-proof Cheyenne Mountain bunker,
The KN-08 is a road-capable, highly mobile ICBM, which can be hidden anywhere throughout the North Korea and could be fired on a short-countdown virtually undetectable by American intelligence. As Adm. Gortney further explained about the North’s KN-08 ICBM, “It’s the relocatable [highly-mobile, can go anywhere – ML] target set that really impedes our ability to find, fix, and finish the [KN-08] threat. And as the [KN-08] targets move around and if we don’t have a persistent stare [i.e., the ability to monitor its location at all times - ML] and persistent [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] that we do not have over North Korea at this time, that relocatable nature makes it very difficult for us to be able to counter it.”
Despite Adm. Gortney’s concerns, he still believes that if a KN-08 was fired at the US homeland, in the Admiral’s words – “Should one get airborne and come at us [the US homeland], I’m confident we would be able to knock it down.”
Even if this is true, it is not clear if the US ballistic defense could knock down an incoming North Korean ICBM in time, if the nuke is intended as an EMP weapon, which explodes soon after re-entering the atmosphere.
System can defend against Iran strike, too
In another dramatic revelation, Adm. Gortney revealed that America’s anti-missile missile shield is not only configured to repulse a North Korean missile, but an Iranian ICBM as well. The Admiral explained that the current assessment is that the threat of an ICBM EMP strike comes from North Korea and not from Iran, but that the system could handle both scenarios. “Our system is designed for North Korea, and if we get our assessment wrong, for Iran. Its [the US homeland missile shield] is designed to defend the nation [the homeland] against both those particular threats today,” he said.
Experts have estimated that the KN-08 has a range of 5,600 miles and would be capable of hitting the US’s west coast if launched from North Korea. Experts also believe the missile is not accurate.
However, Adm. Gortney’s statement about North Korea’s nuke-capable KN-08 ICBM must be taken in the context of his simultaneous announcement of the Pentagon’s concern about an EMP-missile strike on the United States homeland.
South Korean intelligence has long believed that North Korea has been developing an EMP-nuclear device. As early as June 2009, Kim Myong Chol, who was an “unofficial” spokesperson of the then-Supreme Leader Kim Jong-il, openly threatened use of a “high-altitude detonation of hydrogen bombs that would create a powerful electromagnetic pulse” bomb.” And, in November of 2013, South Korea’s intelligence service (NIS) issued a report to the South Korean parliament that North Korea had “purchased Russian electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weaponry to develop its own version” of a nuclear EMP device.
EMP strike on South Korea?
In 2005, then-USAF Major Colin Miller posited, in a public-domain US Air Force University thesis, that the North Koreans could tactically use a nuclear-EMP weapon on the Korean Peninsula to “level-the playing field” against the electronic dependent forces of the United States and South Korea.
The tactical North Korean EMP “decapitation” attack would likely bag as POWs the 40,000 living US marines now guarding South Korea because an EMP doesn’t kill human beings, only electronics.
A tactical nuclear-EMP aimed at South Korea would not need an ICBM to reach the 30-50 km level above the earth to explode. Rather, it would only need a much smaller short-range missile to achieve its suitable EMP-location above the Korean peninsula for an effective EMP detonation.
Given the degree of cooperation between the Islamic Republic of Iran and North Korea, it is highly likely that any nuclear-EMP-technology mastered by North Korea has already been shared with Iran. Therefore, the EMP-proliferation danger from North Korea to Iran is a catastrophic danger.
North Korea has been threatening a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the US for two years, as explained in this ABC News report from 2013. At the time of the report, North Korea was said to be "years away" from a developing a missile that could hit the US: These "years" have apparently passed.
And yet, inexplicably, US President Barack Obama is currently negotiating a deal with Iran that he himself has admitted would enable it to manufacture its own nuclear weapons, 12-13 years after it is signed.
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2)Grandmama Mia!
By Maureen Dowd
WASHINGTON —
WHEN my brother Michael was a Senate page, he delivered mail to John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, who had offices across the hall from each other.
He recalled that Kennedy never looked up or acknowledged his presence, but Nixon would greet him with a huge smile. “Hi, Mike,” he’d say. “How are you doing? How’s the family?”
It seemed a bit counterintuitive, especially since my dad, a D.C. police inspector in charge of Senate security, was a huge Kennedy booster. (The two prominent pictures in our house were of the Mona Lisa and J.F.K.) But after puzzling over it, I finally decided that J.F.K. had the sort of magnetism that could ensorcell big crowds, so he did not need to squander it on mail boys. Nixon, on the other hand, lacked large-scale magnetism, so he needed to work hard to charm people one by one, even mail boys.
Hillary Clinton has always tried to be more like the Democratic president she lived with in the White House, to figure out how he spins the magic. “I never realized how good Bill was at this until I tried to do it,” she once told her adviser, Harold Ickes. But she ends up being compared with the Republican president she investigated as a young lawyer for the House Judiciary’s Watergate investigation.
Her paranoia, secrecy, scandals and disappearing act with emails from her time as secretary of state have inspired a cascade of comparisons with Nixon.
Pat Buchanan, a former Nixon adviser, bluntly told Jason Zengerle recently in New York magazine: “She reminds me of Nixon,” another pol who’s more comfortable behind the scenes than grinding it out in the arena.
As Hillary finally admits the axiomatic — she wants to be president — she will take the Nixon approach, trying to charm people one by one in the early states for 2016, an acknowledgement that she cannot emulate the wholesale allure of Bill Clinton or Barack Obama.
That reality hit her in 2008, when throngs waited hours to get in to hear The One. “Enough with the speeches and the big rallies,” a frustrated Hillary cried out to a Cincinnati crowd.
She wants to avoid the coronation vibe this time, a member of her orbit told Politico’s Glenn Thrush, even though Martin O’Malley, a potential rival, objected that “the presidency of the United States is not some crown to be passed between two families” and The Onion reported her campaign slogan is “I deserve this.”
Hillary’s team plans to schedule low-key events where she can mingle with actual voters. “I think it’s important, and Hillary does, too, that she go out there as if she’s never run for anything before and establish her connection with the voters,” Bill Clinton told Town & Country for a cover story.
The Big Dog, who got off his leash last time in South Carolina, said he will start small as well, noting: “My role should primarily be as a backstage adviser to her until we get much, much closer to the election.”
Democratic strategists and advisers told The Washington Post’s Anne Gearan and Dan Balz that “the go-slow, go-small strategy” plays to her strengths, “allowing her to meet voters in intimate settings where her humor, humility and policy expertise can show through.”
As the old maxim goes, if you can fake humility, you’ve got it made. But seeing Rahm and Hillary do it in the same season might be too much to take.
President Obama has said: “If she’s her wonderful self, I’m sure she’s going to do great.” But which self is that?
Instead of a chilly, scripted, entitled policy wonk, as in 2008, Hillary plans to be a warm, spontaneous, scrappy fighter for average Americans. Instead of a woman campaigning like a man, as in 2008, she will try to stir crowds with the idea of being the first woman president. Instead of haughtily blowing off the press, as in 2008, she will make an effort to play nice.
It’s a do-or-die remodeling, like when you put a new stainless steel kitchen in a house that doesn’t sell.
In 1992, Clinton strategists wrote a memo aiming to recast Hillary in a skeptical public’s mind as a warm, loving mother. They even suggested an event where Bill and Chelsea would surprise Hillary on Mother’s Day.
Now, after 25 years on the national stage, Hillary is still hitting the reset button on her image, this time projecting herself as a warm, loving grandmother.
On the eve of her campaign launch, she released an updated epilogue to her banal second memoir, “Hard Choices,” highlighting her role as a grandmother.
“I’m more convinced than ever that our future in the 21st century depends on our ability to ensure that a child born in the hills of Appalachia or the Mississippi Delta or the Rio Grande Valley grows up with the same shot at success that Charlotte will,” she wrote, referring to her granddaughter.
This was designed to rebut critics who say she’s too close to Wall Street and too grabby with speech money and foundation donations from Arab autocrats to wage a sincere fight against income inequality.
But if Hillary really wants to help those children, maybe she should give them some of the ostensible and obscene $2.5 billion that she is planning to spend to persuade us to make her grandmother of our country.
Top Ten Questions the Lamestream Media Will Never Ask Hillary Clinton:
- If you become president what Obama policy would you change?
- If you become president what Obama policy would you keep?
- In your view, who was a better president, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama?
- Do you think radical Islam is a threat to our country and/or the security of the West?
- Do you think the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the cause of instability in the Middle East?
- If not, then what is?
- Why do you think your proposed health plan never became law while Obama’s did?
- Are you at all concerned about the state of free speech and intellectual freedom on our college campuses?
- After Obama’s two terms as America’s most progressive president, do you still worry about a vast right-wing conspiracy?
- What country do you think is America’s most important ally in the Western world?
- (Bonus question) “What difference does it make?”
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The top political and intellectual leaders of the Israeli left are coming out against President Obama’s capitulation to Iran. This development will impact the political dynamics in Israel, the American Jewish community, and the US-Israel relationship. And it will leave J Street on the fringe, once again.
Israel’s Labor Party opposition, known during the recent election campaign as the Zionist Union, issued an official press release on April 2 criticizing Obama’s Iran deal. The head of the party’s Knesset delegation, MK Eitan Cabel, elaborated on his Facebook page: “I refuse to join those applauding the agreement with Iran, because the truth is it keeps me awake at night. President Obama promises that if the Iranians cheat, the world will know, but isn’t that exactly what the Americans promised after the agreement with North Korea?”
The senior Labor Party official continued: “When a crazy religious regime with a proven track record of terrorism and cheating receives permission to get that close to a nuclear bomb, I am very worried. The fact that the man who is in charge of making sure the deal won’t be broken has a proven record of mocking his own redlines, makes me even more worried.”
Calling Prime Minister Netanyahu’s efforts against the Iran deal “a correct struggle,” the Labor Party MK emphasized that he is “standing behind Netanyahu” because “in the face of a nuclear Iran, there is no coalition and there is no opposition–we are all Israelis.”
Meanwhile, Haaretz editor Aluf Benn, himself a virulent critic of Netanyahu in the past, wrote on April 5 that Netanyahu’s call for the international community to insist that Iran recognize Israel’s right to exist was taken directly from the campaign rhetoric of Labor Party chairman Yitzhak Herzog.
There are signs of change among leading Israeli left-wing intellectuals, as well. Israeli author Ari Shavit, who has been the darling of the American Jewish left because of his recent book urging more Israeli concessions to the Arabs, may find himself with fewer speaking engagements on these shores in the near future, now that he
too has come out against the Iran capitulation.
Writing for Politico on April 2, Shavit called Obama’s deal “a terrible historic mistake.”
“If Iran is nuclearized, everyone’s values and way of life will be endangered,” Shavit wrote. “If the Middle East is nuclearized, the 21st century will become a century of nuclear terror andnuclear horror. The deal that Obama announced on Thursday does not do enough to prevent this. Does an agreement that allows Iran to keep 6,100 spinning centrifuges really lock under 1,000 locks and bolt behind 1,000 bolts the Iranian nuclear project? Does an agreement that allows Iran to maintain research and development capabilities and an underground facility on Fordow really fully take advantage of Iran’s economic frailty in order to ensure the dismantling of its nuclear infrastructure?”
By contrast, J Street, the pro-Palestinian lobbying group that represents a portion of the American Jewish left, is defending President Obama’s Iran capitulation and doing everything possible to help him get the deal past Congress and other critics.
Until just days ago, J Street, the Israeli Labor Party, Haaretz, and Ari Shavit were all close allies in the electoral battle to defeat Prime Minister Netanyahu. J Street supporters and donors threw themselves into the campaign, importing American-style political tactics and arguments that they erroneously believed would work in the Middle East.
Now, suddenly, J Street finds itself at odds with leading voices of the Israeli left. Why are Israeli and American Jewish left-wingers responding so differently to the Iran deal? Simple: because Israelis have to live with the consequences.
For the J Street crowd, it’s easy enough to mouth slogans from the comforts of Potomac and Scarsdale. They will never have to suffer the real-life consequences of their advice. But their Israeli former-comrades know that their favorite cafe in Tel Aviv is just as likely to be hit by an Iranian nuclear missile as some Jewish community in Judea or Samaria.
In the face of the new Israeli left-right consensus on Iran, J Street will be effectively pushed back to the fringes in the American Jewish community. But don’t expect the J Streeters to reconsider their positions. Diehard ideologues rarely have a change of heart, no matter what is happening in the world around them. In the months ahead, they will probably pretend that the Israeli left doesn’t exist, and concentrate their fire on American Jewish leaders and congressmen who dare to question Obama.
Because that, in the end, is J Street’s true mission – not to facilitate peace, not to help protect Israel, but to facilitate President Obama’s political agenda and to protect him from Jewish critics.
Moshe Phillips is president and Benyamin Korn is chairman of the Religious Zionists of Philadelphia, and both are current candidates on the Religious Zionist slate (www.VoteTorah.org) in the World Zionist Congress elections.
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4) Remember what Jesus said: 'Goats on the left, sheep on the right' (Matthew 25:33).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Jesus also told Peter that if he wanted to catch fish do it from the right side of the boat. They did and filled the boat with fish.John 21:6 (NIV) ... He said, "Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some." When they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish."Origin of Left & Right...I have often wondered why it is that Conservatives are called the right" and Liberals are called the "left".By chance I stumbled upon this verse in the Bible: Ecclesiastes 10:2 (NIV) - "The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left."Thus sayeth the Lord. Amen.It surely can't get any simpler than that.Spelling Lesson :The last four letters in American.......... I CanThe last four letters in Republican........ I CanThe last four letters in Democrats......... RatsEnd of lesson ! .....Test to follow on November 6, 2016 .Remember, November 2016 is to be set aside as rodent removal month.
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