Will Doofus run? (See 1 below.)
and
Sowell sorts. (See 1a below.)
====
Tobin on dishonesty in support of Iran Deal! (See 2 below.)
Then let's hear it for The Snopes Crowd. (See 2a below.)
===
Dennis Pager and the shaping by the Left! (See 3 below.)
Obama to Dems - vote for the Deal or else! (See 3a below.)
===
Shoe on the other foot. (See 4 below.)
===
This was sent to me by a long time friend, a fellow memo reader and a solid analyst who helps manage some of our money. He sent it in response to my recent comments about deflation being my own personal concern. (See 5 below.)
===
Eventually dictators and idiots overstay their welcome. Trump has some of the characteristics of both and he will fall on his sword if he does not learn when to stop.
He has made great progress as a candidate of the disaffected and he has truly contributed to the campaign when it comes to touching the third rail which everyone seeks to avoid. For this he should be given his due.
That said, his petulance has reached a childhood level and coming from someone who might become president it now borders on the scary.
It is as if he is running to become the premier of France and takes affront at criticism of their 'escargot, vin and fromage.'
No single president can make America great again without the full support of the people, Congress and accommodation from allies.
Trump's expanding ego could result in a burst blood vessel if he persists.(See 6 below.)
===
Dick
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1)-
The Biden Plot Thickens
The White House spokesman gives Joe the superlative treatment.
The hints are growing stronger that Joe Biden might decide to run for President after all, and there’s no reason we can’t join the frolic among the tea leaves. Especially fascinating is what a Biden run would signal about Hillary Clinton’s political and legal vulnerability over her emails and Clinton Foundation donations.
The Vice President met privately with Elizabeth Warren on Saturday, a meeting no doubt leaked by the Biden team. The Massachusetts Senator is the patron saint of the Democratic left these days and Mr. Biden would love her support if he does run. Then on Sunday our colleagues in the Journal’s Washington bureau reported that the Veep is leaning toward a run. Other media reinforced the story.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest added to the intrigue when he volunteered to reporters on Monday that President Obama thinks his decision to choose Mr. Biden as his running mate was “the smartest decision he’s ever made in politics.” Mr. Earnest is a careful man who wouldn’t say this without clear presidential authorization.
“The Vice President is somebody who has already run for President twice,” Mr. Earnest added. “So I think you could make the case that there is probably no one in American politics today who has a better understanding of exactly what is required to mount a successful national presidential campaign.”
So where does that leave Mrs. Clinton in the President’s esteem? Mr. Earnest described Mr. Obama’s “appreciation and respect and admiration” for Mrs. Clinton, citing his “warm” remarks in the past about her service. But the former Secretary of State did not get the President’s superlative treatment.
All of this is notable, and not merely for what it says about Mr. Obama’s fondness for Mr. Biden. The President is enough of a cold-blooded politician to know that a considerable part of his legacy will depend on whether a Democrat succeeds him in the Oval Office. Above personal feelings, he wants a Democratic nominee who can win in 2016.
Mr. Biden ran for President in 1988 and 2008 and lost, so why would he be a better candidate now? The Veep would be starting late, and most Democratic officeholders and donors are already committed to Hillary and Bill. Mr. Biden might figure he can run as a more authentic tribune of the middle class, but Bernie Sanders has a head start running as the economic populist. On paper at least, Mr. Biden would still be a long shot to defeat the Clinton machine.
Which leads us to wonder what Mr. Biden and Mr. Obama know about Mrs. Clinton’s mishandling of classified information on her personal email server while running the State Department. The FBI is now investigating, and it’s hard to believe the White House wouldn’t have some inkling about the seriousness of that probe.
The FBI pressed investigations that forced two CIA directors, David Petraeus and John Deutch, into pleading guilty to misdemeanors for lesser violations than Mrs. Clinton appears to have committed. FBI Director James Comey and Attorney General Loretta Lynch would be hard-pressed to block an FBI recommendation that sought a misdemeanor plea bargain if it were rooted in solid evidence and consistent enforcement under the law. Such a plea would be devastating to Mrs. Clinton’s credibility even if it didn’t end her campaign.
All of which is to say that the possibility of a third Joe Biden candidacy is looking more appealing than we ever imagined
1a)
It is true that the inspections that will take place (after 24 days notice to the Iranians) will give the international community a better idea about the layout of the Islamist regime’s nuclear facilities. It will also, as Crowley writes, give them more data about the “supply chain” for their infrastructure, including their uranium mines and mills. Were the U.S. ever to conduct a bombing campaign, that information will be useful.
It’s also true that Iran is quite worried about letting Westerners of any sort, let alone Americans into their military facilities that are part of their nuclear project. As Crowley notes, that’s part of the reason they insisted on the farcical inspections process at Parchin that, as we learned last week, will call for all the on-site work to be done by the Iranians themselves. Administration apologists have tried to twist themselves into pretzels to deny this or to come up with “truther” theories about the Parchin agreement but the fact is, the Iranians’ tough negotiating stand won them the right to keep inspectors out of the place where they were building nuclear bomb triggers and did other work directly related to the bomb project.
Though at times the president has given lip service to “all options including force” being on the table, such threats lacked credibility. At every point in the negotiations when Iran said no to Western demands, the administration conceded the point to them. Even at the end of the process when a subtle threat of force might have won him a couple of Iranian concessions that might have made the deal look stronger, the president personally made it clear that he didn’t believe that force could work against Iran thus removing any pressure that the hint of a military option might have provided.
It is true that the next president may take a more sanguine view of Iran than Obama. But as even some of the Republican presidential contenders have conceded, once implemented this deal won’t be so easy to unravel, let alone provide an opportunity for the West to bomb the Iranian nuclear plants. Let’s remember that the deal is just the tip of the iceberg of the process that will unfold in the coming months and years by which U.S. and European businesses will get involved in the Iranian economy. Once sanctions are lifted, re-imposing them won’t be easy. Snapping them back, as Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry promised would be part of any deal, won’t be a realistic option.
What Obama has done is to set in motion a process by which the West is, in essence, a partner with the Iranians on their nuclear project. The deal grants it virtual immunity and has already put Israel — the only other power that has any ability to use force against Iran — in a position where it would be very difficult, it not impossible for it to consider bombing.
So while U.S. intelligence may get some material it might not have gotten, that won’t make it easier or even remotely more realistic that bombing could ever happen. Like the promise of the Massive Ordinance Penetrator bombs, information that would be useful in a bombing campaign won’t ever be used.
Let’s not kid ourselves. War was never nor is it now the best option to deal with Iran. Had the U.S. stuck to a process of isolating Iran, ratcheting up sanctions and creating an embargo on it sale of Iran, it would brought the regime’s economy down and created enough leverage to make a deal that would have ended the nuclear threat possible. With strong U.S. leadership that would force the West and even Russia and China to follow (since they would suffer greatly if they were cut off from the U.S. economy by sanctions measures), it is still possible to get a better deal. But even if we were to see war as a final option, once this deal is signed, that will be off the table.
If members of the House and Senate want to vote for this deal they should do so if they believe in its dubious merits. But none of them should be so simple as to fall for the argument that it will make war easier. That is a blatantly dishonest argument that should be dismissed by even the most gullible members as pure spin. Once implemented, nothing short of a cataclysm will make force an option against Iran. Indeed, that’s exactly the point of Obama’s shift to an Iran-centric policy that hinges on détente with the Islamist regime. Anyone who isn’t comfortable with the U.S. enabling Iran to become a threshold nuclear power must vote against the deal.
Jonathan S. Tobin is senior online editor of COMMENTARY magazine and chief political blogger at www.commentarymagazine.com. He can be reached via e-mail at:jtobin@commentarymagazine.com.
The president’s view is that the deal is a good one. A majority of Americans and of Congress believe it is not. History will judge who was right and who was wrong, but what is already certain is that the president can only get his way by overriding the position held by most Americans — and by making use of his veto.
The White House hopes to avoid having this unfold quite so baldly by preventing the Senate from even voting on a resolution of disapproval. If the administration’s team can move to filibuster the vote, which by law must occur by mid-September, and keep opponents from getting the 60 votes necessary to push the vote forward, the president can block Congress’ resolution of disapproval from even reaching his desk. He can then avoid the spectacle of having to veto the will of the American people on a nuclear gamble favored by him and opposed by them.
Quashing Congress’ right to vote on the Iran deal would be cynical on the White House’s part, but not uncharacteristically so.
5)
1a)
1a) Sorting the Candidates
Despite a nuclear Iran looming on the horizon, the media seem to be putting most of their attention on two candidates for their respective parties' presidential nominations next year. Moreover, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump each make their own party nervous.
If next year's election comes down to Clinton versus Trump, a lot of people may simply stay home in disgust.
When we are this far away from the official start of the primary election season, we can usually just say, "It's still early days." Many a front runner this early in the process ended up out of the running by the time the party conventions were held, and totally forgotten by election day.
That is the way it usually is. But that is not likely to be the way it will be this time.
This is Hillary Clinton's last hurrah. It is now or never for her. And the Democrats have nobody comparable as a vote-getter to put in her place.
Even if an investigation finds Mrs. Clinton found guilty of violating the law in the way she handled e-mails when she was Secretary of State, the Obama administration is not likely to prosecute her. And President Obama can always pardon her, so that the next administration cannot prosecute her either. So Hillary doesn't even have to take a plea bargain.
Someone with a sense of shame might well withdraw from the contest for the Democratic Party's nomination, now that public opinion polls show that most people distrust her. But since when have the Clintons ever had a sense of shame?
On the Republican side, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich has pointed out that if Donald Trump can continue to get 20 or 25 percent of the Republican voters on his side, he can build up a formidable lead of delegates in winner-take-all primaries.
It will not matter if 60 percent of the Republican voters turn against him, if that 60 percent is split up among all the other Republican candidates, with none of those candidates getting more votes than Trump.
Sometimes financial backers can withdraw their support and force a stubborn candidate to drop out of the race. But Trump has enough money of his own to stay in the race as long as he wants to, even if that ruins the Republicans' chances of winning the 2016 elections.
Ironically, the Republicans have a much stronger set of presidential candidates than usual to choose from this year. But the media obsession with Trump means that even the best of these candidates are not likely to get enough exposure for most voters to get to know much about them.
Governors with superb records -- such as Bobby Jindal in Louisiana and Scott Walker in Wisconsin -- may not have much name recognition on the national scene. And certainly the little sound bites in the so-called "debates" are not likely to tell the voters much.
This is not just the candidates' problem. With this country facing historic dangers, both internally and internationally, we urgently need to find someone with depth, insight and courage as the next President of the United States.
But, with the media obsessed with Donald Trump's show biz talents and persona -- and covering everything he says, does or might do, 24/7 -- how are the voters to sort through the large number of Republican candidates to find a couple that are worth getting to know more thoroughly?
It will be like trying to find a needle in a haystack. And never was finding that needle, the right leader, more important for the nation.
Internally, we are so polarized over immigration that our current "leaders" have left our borders wide open to terrorists from around the world, rather than take the political risks of offending voters on one side of this issue or offending voters on the opposite side. Instead, they risk American lives by their inaction.
Internationally, our "leaders" have written a blank check for our most dangerous and fanatical enemy -- Iran -- to get both nuclear bombs and the missiles to deliver them. And the Obama administration, with a track record of huge shameless lies, offers us its reassurances.
We had better find that needle in a haystack, someone who can salvage a desperate situation. Flamboyant rhetoric is not enough.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We already know that President Obama will do and say just about anything in order to pressure Democrats to vote for his Iran nuclear deal. He’s smeared Jewish groups, falsely argued that only Israel is against it, and disingenuously accused Republicans of opposing it for partisan reasons when it was he that destroyed the bipartisan consensus on Iran by pressuring Democrats to back the deal out of party loyalty. The administration has also consistently misled Congress and the public about the nature of the deal and the way it preserves Tehran’s nuclear infrastructure and right to continue advanced research that will give it a bomb virtually the moment the pact expires in a decade. But the most dishonest argument it has deployed to win over skeptics is the one highlight today in Politico. According to Michael Crowley’s feature, “the ultimate argument in favor of the Iran deal” is that “it would make it easier to bomb Iran.” Believe it or not, that’s actually what the administration is telling members of Congress this week. The question is whether there can be any member of Congress stupid enough to buy it?
Give the president credit for chutzpah. Having spent the last several months labeling opponents of his policy on Iran as warmongers, his staffers are now trying to persuade those who worry about the way the deal makes it even more dangerous, that the intelligence the U.S. gets about its facilities will make it easier to bomb them if it should ever violate the pact.
There is a superficial logic to this assertion.
It is true that the inspections that will take place (after 24 days notice to the Iranians) will give the international community a better idea about the layout of the Islamist regime’s nuclear facilities. It will also, as Crowley writes, give them more data about the “supply chain” for their infrastructure, including their uranium mines and mills. Were the U.S. ever to conduct a bombing campaign, that information will be useful.
It’s also true that Iran is quite worried about letting Westerners of any sort, let alone Americans into their military facilities that are part of their nuclear project. As Crowley notes, that’s part of the reason they insisted on the farcical inspections process at Parchin that, as we learned last week, will call for all the on-site work to be done by the Iranians themselves. Administration apologists have tried to twist themselves into pretzels to deny this or to come up with “truther” theories about the Parchin agreement but the fact is, the Iranians’ tough negotiating stand won them the right to keep inspectors out of the place where they were building nuclear bomb triggers and did other work directly related to the bomb project.
But even if we concede all this, that doesn’t amount to a compelling argument to support the deal. Information that could be used to bomb Iran might be useful but if the agreement goes through, President Obama will have made it virtually impossible for such a military campaign to ever take place.
As I wrote back in June when Crowley wrote about the bunker buster bombs that were part of the Pentagon’s plans for bombing Iran, this is an administration that has never had a “Plan B” that would allow for the use of force if the talks failed.
Though at times the president has given lip service to “all options including force” being on the table, such threats lacked credibility. At every point in the negotiations when Iran said no to Western demands, the administration conceded the point to them. Even at the end of the process when a subtle threat of force might have won him a couple of Iranian concessions that might have made the deal look stronger, the president personally made it clear that he didn’t believe that force could work against Iran thus removing any pressure that the hint of a military option might have provided.
The same dynamic will be in operation once the deal is implemented. Having invested so heavily in a deal whose premise is détente with an Iran that Obama thinks “wants to get right with the world,” the U.S. will be reluctant to even notice violations of the pact, let alone accept the notion that Iran is cheating. If it was impossible to imagine that Obama would ever bomb Iran no matter what it did before the deal, it will be even harder to conceive of such a scenario after it was signed.
It is true that the next president may take a more sanguine view of Iran than Obama. But as even some of the Republican presidential contenders have conceded, once implemented this deal won’t be so easy to unravel, let alone provide an opportunity for the West to bomb the Iranian nuclear plants. Let’s remember that the deal is just the tip of the iceberg of the process that will unfold in the coming months and years by which U.S. and European businesses will get involved in the Iranian economy. Once sanctions are lifted, re-imposing them won’t be easy. Snapping them back, as Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry promised would be part of any deal, won’t be a realistic option.
What Obama has done is to set in motion a process by which the West is, in essence, a partner with the Iranians on their nuclear project. The deal grants it virtual immunity and has already put Israel — the only other power that has any ability to use force against Iran — in a position where it would be very difficult, it not impossible for it to consider bombing.
Part of the premise of the deal is a belief that Iran’s “breakout” time to a bomb will be lengthened so as to give the West a year to decide what to do about Iranian cheating. But there are two problems with this. One is that any estimates about breakout time are guesses. The lax inspection process won’t clear up that fog of uncertainty. Just as important, by the time U.S. intelligence figures out what is going on that would just be the start of a debate within the U.S. security apparatus and with our allies about what to do about it. By the time all that is resolved, it would almost certainly would be too late to anything about it. Indeed, once Iran is on the cusp of having a bomb, it would also create a dynamic that would make the West reluctant to challenge a nuclear power, especially one run by religious fanatics as is the case with Iran.
So while U.S. intelligence may get some material it might not have gotten, that won’t make it easier or even remotely more realistic that bombing could ever happen. Like the promise of the Massive Ordinance Penetrator bombs, information that would be useful in a bombing campaign won’t ever be used.
Let’s not kid ourselves. War was never nor is it now the best option to deal with Iran. Had the U.S. stuck to a process of isolating Iran, ratcheting up sanctions and creating an embargo on it sale of Iran, it would brought the regime’s economy down and created enough leverage to make a deal that would have ended the nuclear threat possible. With strong U.S. leadership that would force the West and even Russia and China to follow (since they would suffer greatly if they were cut off from the U.S. economy by sanctions measures), it is still possible to get a better deal. But even if we were to see war as a final option, once this deal is signed, that will be off the table.
If members of the House and Senate want to vote for this deal they should do so if they believe in its dubious merits. But none of them should be so simple as to fall for the argument that it will make war easier. That is a blatantly dishonest argument that should be dismissed by even the most gullible members as pure spin. Once implemented, nothing short of a cataclysm will make force an option against Iran. Indeed, that’s exactly the point of Obama’s shift to an Iran-centric policy that hinges on détente with the Islamist regime. Anyone who isn’t comfortable with the U.S. enabling Iran to become a threshold nuclear power must vote against the deal.
Jonathan S. Tobin is senior online editor of COMMENTARY magazine and chief political blogger at www.commentarymagazine.com. He can be reached via e-mail at:jtobin@commentarymagazine.com.
2a)
)
LOS ANGELES, CA - Snopes.com owners Barbara and David Mikkelson were detained by police today after an unrelated investigation of a Snopes.com editor lead police onto a paper trail of corruption, bribery, and fraud at the very heart of the fact-checking organization. Evidence obtained by police has revealed that Snopes.com, which markets itself as "the definitive Internet reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation," has a history of accepting money and favors from left-leaning and pro-Islamic political groups and individuals for helping them to advance their cause by rigging public discourse with selective fact-finding and deliberate manipulation of public opinion. Late Monday morning, Brian Williston, a Snopes.com editor, who also doubles as the accountant, found himself at a flea market on the outskirts of Los Angeles. As he was browsing the different tables and tents looking for antiques, an old mechanical piano began playing Dixie's Land, a song that was adopted as a de facto anthem of the Confederacy during the American Civil War and is now considered offensive by some due to its link to the iconography and ideology of the Old South. The tune sparked an outrage in Williston, who began yelling and cursing those who "would like to bring back slavery and racial separation," and ordering the vendors to "turn off that racist music." When no one nearby claimed to know how to turn off the one-hundred-year-old machine, Williston became violent. He started grabbing various antique objects from the vendors' tables and throwing them at the antique piano in an attempt to silence the music. A bystander, later identified as William Barksdale, working as a courier for the L.A. Messenger Service, attempted to calm Williston down, saying that "someone is just trying to see if that the piano still works" and "it's only a song, don't shoot the pianist," but that only prompted the infuriated editor to redirect his rage to the messenger. Williston, who is white, began to choke Barksdale, who is black, while screaming "Shut up! Shut up!" as the mechanical piano continued to play Dixie's Land in the background. After some of the shoppers intervened and pried Williston's hands off the courier's throat, the Snopes.com editor fled the scene of the incident. LAPD quickly identified Williston by the personal check he left with one of the vendors, which contained his full name and address. While inside his home, Williston ignored commands to open the door, causing police to use forced entry in order to detain him. The arresting officer caught Williston slipping some papers under a Persian rug, which prompted the police to remove the rug and examine the documents underneath it. One of them turned out to be a handwritten ledger, containing names of well-known individuals and organizations who have been paying Snopes.com to debunk stories that cast them in a bad light, while validating damaging half-truths and rumors about their political opponents. Having established their website as a reputable resource for validating and debunking stories in American popular culture since 1995, the Mikkelson couple soon found themselves in a position to influence public discourse by punishing or rewarding certain cultural and political biases. Before long they were accepting money to promote some rumors and downplay or completely ignore some others, which over the years have brought them millions of dollars, according to the source. Especially scandalous may be the website's possible collaboration with left-leaning national media organizations, which started with payments to Snopes.com to overlook or validate their inaccurate and biased reporting, and eventually evolved into a full-scale coordinated effort with left-leaning groups and public relation firms to construct a media narrative that gave legitimacy to certain opinions, political causes and public figures, while discrediting other opinions, causes, and public figures. The list of groups and individuals paying to use the website's clout ranged from local politicians to transnational entities to foreign governments, including Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the Palestinian Authority. None of the specifics or individual names are being revealed while the investigation is still ongoing, but a police source has indicated that "the shockwaves will rock the world of the media and the political establishment." Several watchdog groups have already condemned Snopes.com as a corrupt organization with zero credibility and urged their readers to disregard any political debunking from this tainted source. But some media experts predict that, given the high-profile names involved, as well as the power and magnitude of the political opinion-generating machine of which Snopes.com was only a small wheel, the story may never be allowed to reach a full-blown scandal and will soon be discarded as an urban legend, joining a long line of other similar stories debunked by Snopes.com. |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3)
Why Do Many Jews Support the Iran Deal?
ByDennis Prager
The more one knows about the Iran deal, the more obvious it becomes that it is not a deal so much as it is a fraud. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the definition of a fraud is “something that is meant to look like the real thing in order to trick people.” That precisely describes the Iran deal. Virtually every claim made for it is either not true or insignificant.
There are no “anytime, anywhere” inspections, as Americans were promised during the negotiations.
–No American or Canadian inspectors will be allowed into Iran.
–The agreement obligates all the parties, including the United States, to help Iran protect its nuclear facilities against an attack, whether physical or cyber.
–Any area of Iran that the Iranian regime designates “military” cannot be inspected.
–Iran can object to any inspection and delay it at least 24 days and, according to the Wall Street Journal, up to three months.
–The deal will free a hundred billion dollars and eventually much more for the Iranian regime to use to bolster Iran’s economy and to supply terror groups around the world.
In light of these weaknesses, any one of which renders the deal fraudulent, how could anyone who cares about America, not to mention Israel, support it?
And it gets worse: There are two secret side deals to the agreement made between Iran and the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). They are not just kept secret from you and me. They are kept secret from the president, the secretary of state (who admitted to Congress that he has not seen them) and the Congress of the United States.
How then could any member of Congress vote to affirm an agreement with Iran, crucial parts of which they cannot even know about? Why do those secrets between Iran and the United Nations simply not invalidate this agreement?
But I wish to focus on American Jews. How is it, in light of the above and in light of Iran’s stated aim of annihilating Israel, that so many American Jews — despite the opposition of so many national Jewish groups and even of the Jewish federations of liberal cities such as Boston and Los Angeles — support this deal?
The question is legitimate for four reasons:
First, and most obvious, Israel is the one Jewish state, and one would assume that American Jews have a moral and emotional commitment to Israel’s welfare, not to mention survival.
Second, according to various polls, American Jews may be the ethnic or religious group most supportive of the deal. How is that possible?
Third, the vast majority of Israeli Jews oppose the deal. According to Israel’s major left-wing newspaper, Haaretz, only one in 10 Israelis supports the deal. Yet, at least 50 percent of American Jews support it. Why the five-to-one discrepancy?
Fourth, even most left-wing Israelis oppose the deal. As Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic reported: “The Iran deal represents one of those rare issues that has unified Israelis of most political parties. And that includes the opposition leader, the head of the Labor Party, Isaac Herzog: ‘Iran,’ Herzog told me, has Israelis — of the ‘left, center and right,’ he said — ‘frightened.'”
So then, in light of the deal’s terrible defects, in light of the specific concerns of Jews and in light of the nearly universal opposition to the deal among Israeli Jews, why do half of America’s Jews support it?
One answer, given by many American Jewish supporters of the deal, is that they back the deal precisely because they do care about Israel. And when American Jews with a record of strong support of Israel say this, I believe them.
But I do have a question: If the deal is good for Israel, why do only one in 10 Israelis support it? How can Jews living in Los Angeles or New York tell 90 percent of Israelis that they know better what’s good for Israel? That’s what Jews call chutzpah.
As for American Jews who don’t have a strong record of support of Israel, I do not believe them when they say they believe the deal is good for Israel.
Here’s why: If a Republican president had negotiated this deal, Democrats would now be strongly opposing it — along with most Republicans. But a Republican president never would have negotiated a deal that so weakens America’s position in the Middle East and puts Israel in such peril. Also, both Republicans and Democrats would have — correctly — opposed a president of the United States negotiating what is in fact a treaty without Congress’ approval.
So why do so many American Jews support the deal? Because they 1) are loyal to President Obama, 2) have an intense dislike of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and 3) have an intense dislike of Republicans.
In addition, both Jews and non-Jews often forget that Israel is no longer important to an increasing number of American Jews. Jews are the most left-wing ethnic and religious group in America — in part because Jews are more secular than others and attend college in greater numbers — and the more people embrace a left-wing view of the world the more hostile to Israel they are likely to become.
There are, therefore, quite a number of American Jews who support the Iran deal for reasons having nothing to do with Israel. They only care about America, they say, and the deal is good for America. One presumes that most of these people also believe that pulling all our troops out of Iraq was good for America. It wasn’t. These Jews and non-Jews believe that the answer to evil is negotiation, not confrontation. That there is no historical basis for that belief does not disturb them. These people are still singing “Give Peace a Chance.”
So why do many American Jews — including some supporters of Israel — back the Iran deal? For the same reason the minority of American non-Jews who support the deal do: Their outlook on life has been shaped by the Left.
3a)
BOSTONHERALD.COM
Despite wall-to-wall polls indicating that Americans overwhelmingly believe his nuclear deal with Iran is a bad one that Congress should reject, and despite the resolution disapproving the deal expected to pass both houses of Congress with the help of Democratic defectors, President Obama is highly likely to prevail on the deal and to be able to proceed with it. This is because opponents in the House and Senate are unlikely to recruit enough Democrats to their side to secure the two-thirds vote necessary in both branches to override his veto.
Over the past few weeks, Democrats pressured by the White House and threatened with political retaliation by left-leaning interest groups dominating the Democratic Party have bowed to the pressure and announced that they will support Obama’s deal. This has sharpened the prospect of an historic moment destined to stand out in inescapably stark relief for those looking back at it.
Under the deal, the West abandons the leverage it had applied to Iran to dissuade it from going nuclear, provides the world’s foremost state sponsor of terror with massive funding with which to pursue terror, weapons acquisition and its nuclear program, removes international restrictions on Iran’s acquisition of conventional and ballistic weapons and removes the practical obstacles to Iran’s deployment of nuclear weapons in about 15 years.
The president’s view is that the deal is a good one. A majority of Americans and of Congress believe it is not. History will judge who was right and who was wrong, but what is already certain is that the president can only get his way by overriding the position held by most Americans — and by making use of his veto.
Put bluntly, the president faces the prospect of having to ram his nuclear gamble — a gamble with American national security — past a Congress decisively opposed to it and an American people whose future will be endangered if he is wrong.
The White House hopes to avoid having this unfold quite so baldly by preventing the Senate from even voting on a resolution of disapproval. If the administration’s team can move to filibuster the vote, which by law must occur by mid-September, and keep opponents from getting the 60 votes necessary to push the vote forward, the president can block Congress’ resolution of disapproval from even reaching his desk. He can then avoid the spectacle of having to veto the will of the American people on a nuclear gamble favored by him and opposed by them.
Whether he can do this will depend on whether he can enlist enough Democrats prepared to support him on the deal to go even further and actively thwart the Senate’s ability to express its opposition to
it — and record that opposition for history’s eyes.
it — and record that opposition for history’s eyes.
Quashing Congress’ right to vote on the Iran deal would be cynical on the White House’s part, but not uncharacteristically so.
“I welcome a robust debate in Congress on this issue and scrutiny of the details of this agreement,” said Obama, who then tried so hard to prevent Congress from reviewing the deal at all, and whose administration then attempted to hide the fact that the deal depended on two secret side agreements between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The White House’s pronouncements about the deal have ranged from eye-rolling to jaw-dropping. Its jamming of Congress, its labeling of deal opponents as warmongers and its galvanizing of a partisan Democratic minority to stymie a bipartisan majority have been adept. Say what one will about Obama’s performance: It has worked. The question is whether he can now avoid the veto that will highlight for future generations the sharp divide between his view of his nuclear gamble and that of the people who will be obliged to live with it.
Jeff Robbins, a former U.S. delegate to the U.N. Human Rights Commission, is an attorney in Boston. Talk back at letterstoeditor@bostonherald.com.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4)It appears that MEXICO IS ANGRY WITH ARIZONA
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The shoe is on the other foot and the Mexicans from the State of Sonora, Mexico do not like it. Can you believe the nerve of these people? It's almost funny. The State of Sonora is angry at the influx of Mexicans into Mexico ! !
The state legislators from the Mexican State of Sonora traveled to Tucson to complain about Arizona 's new employer crackdown on illegals from Mexico. It seems that many Mexican illegals are returning to their hometowns and the officials in the Sonora state government are ticked off. A delegation of nine state legislators from Sonora were in Tucson on Tuesday to state that Arizona's new 'Employer Sanctions Law' will have a devastating effecton the Mexican state. At a news conference, the legislators said that Sonora, - Arizona's southern neighbor - made up of mostly small towns - cannot handle the demand for housing, jobs and schools that it will face as Mexican workers return to their home towns from the USA without jobs or money.The Arizona law, which took effect Jan. 1, punishes Arizona employers who knowingly hire individuals without valid legal documents to work in the United States. Penalties include suspension of, or loss of, their business license. The Mexican legislators are angry because their own citizens are returning to their hometowns, placing a burden on THEIR state government instead of ours.'How can Arizona pass a law like this?' asked Mexican Rep Leticia Amparano-Gamez, who represents Nogales. 'There is not one person living in Sonora who does not have a friend or relative working in Arizona,' she said, speaking in Spanish. 'Mexico is not prepared for this, for the tremendous problems it will face as more and more Mexicans working in Arizona and who were sending money to their families return to their home towns in Sonora without jobs,' she said 'We are one family, socially andeconomically,' she said of the people of Sonora and Arizona. Wrong!The United States is a sovereign nation, not a subsidiary of Mexico, and its taxpayers are not responsible for the welfare of Mexico's citizens. It's time for the Mexican government, and its citizens, to stop feeding parasitically off the United States and to start taking care of its/their own needs.
Too bad those other states within the USA don't pass a law just like that passed by Arizona. Maybe that's the answer, since our own Congress will do nothing!
*New Immigration Laws*Be sure to read to the bottom or you will miss the message...1. There will be no special bilingual programs in the schools.2. All ballots will be in this nation's language.3. All government business will be conducted in our language.4. Non-residents will NOT have the right to vote no matter how long they are here.5. Non-citizens will NEVER be able to hold political office.6. Foreigners will not be a burden to the taxpayers. No welfare, no food stamps, no health care, or any other government assistance programs. Any who are a burden will be deported.7. Foreigners can invest in this country, but it must be an amount at least equal to 40,000 times the daily minimum wage.8. If foreigners come here and buy land, their options will be
restricted. Certain parcels including waterfront property are reserved for citizens naturally born into this country.9. Foreigners may have NO protests; NO demonstrations, NO waving of a foreign flag, no political organizing, NO bad-mouthing our president or his policies. These will lead to deportation.10. If you do come to this country illegally, you will be actively hunted and, when caught, sent to jail until your deportation can be arranged. All assets will be taken from you.Too strict? The above 10 laws are the current immigration laws of MEXICO!If Americans are required to obey Mexican immigration laws, isn't it only fair that Mexicans should be required to obey American immigration laws.
5)
The Dangerous Long Bias and the End of the Supercycle
and
Why We Believe That the Next Big Fed Move Will Be to Ease (Via QE) Rather Than to Tighten
Ray Dalio
As you know, the Fed and our templates for how the economic machine works are quite different so our views about what is happening and what should be done are quite different.
To us the economy works like a perpetual motion machine in which short-term interest rates are kept below the returns of other asset classes and the returns of other asset classes are more volatile (because they have longer duration) than cash. That relationship exists because a) central banks want interest rates to be lower than the returns that those who are borrowing to invest can generate from that borrowing in order to make their activities profitable and b) longer-term assets have more duration that makes them more volatile than cash, which is perceived as risk, and investors will demand higher returns for riskier assets.
Given that, let's now imagine how the machine works to affect debt, asset prices, and economic activity.
Because short-term interest rates are normally below the rates of return of longer-term assets, you'd expect people to borrow at the short-term interest rate and buy long-term assets to profit from the spread. That is what they do. These long-term assets might be businesses, the assets that make these businesses work well, equities, etc. People also borrow for consumption. Borrowing to buy is tempting because, over the short term, one can have more without a penalty and, because of the borrowing and buying, the assets bought tend to go up, which rewards the leveraged borrower. That fuels asset price appreciation and most economic activity. It also leads to the building of leveraged long positions.
Of course, if short-term interest rates were always lower than the returns of other asset classes (i.e., the spreads were always positive), everyone would run out and borrow cash and own higher returning assets to the maximum degree possible. So there are occasional "bad" periods when that is not the case, at which time both people with leveraged long positions and the economy do badly. Central banks typically determine when these bad periods occur, just as they determine when the good periods occur, by affecting the spreads. Typically they narrow the spreads (by raising interest rates) when the growth in demand is growing faster than the growth in capacity to satisfy it and the amount of unused capacity (e.g., the GDP gap) is tight (which they do to curtail inflation), and they widen the spreads when the opposite configuration exists, which causes cycles. That's what the Fed is now thinking of doing—i.e., raising interest rates based on how central banks classically manage the classic cycle. In our opinion, that is because they are paying too much attention to that cycle and not enough attention to secular forces.
As a result of these short-term (typically 5 to 8 year) expansions punctuated by years of less contraction, this leveraged long bias, along with asset prices and economic activity, increases in several steps forward for each step backwards. We call each step forward the expansion phase of each short-term debt cycle (or the expansion phase of each business cycle) and we call each step back the contraction phase of each short-term debt cycle (or the recession phase of the business cycle). In other words, because there are a few steps forward for every one step back, a long-term debt cycle results. Debts rise relative to incomes until they can't rise any more.
Interest rate declines help to extend the process because lower interest rates a) cause asset prices to rise because they lower the discount rate that future cash flows are discounted at, thus raising the present value of these assets, b) make it more affordable to borrow, and c) reduce the interest costs of servicing debt. For example, since 1981, every cyclical peak and every cyclical low in interest rates was lower than the one before it until short-term interest rates hit 0%, at which time credit growth couldn't be increased by lowering interest rates so central banks printed money and bought bonds, leading the sellers of those bonds to use the cash they received to buy assets that had higher expected returns, which drove those asset prices up and drove their expected returns down to levels that left the spreads relatively low.
That's where we find ourselves now—i.e., interest rates around the world are at or near 0%, spreads are relatively narrow (because asset prices have been pushed up) and debt levels are high. As a result, the ability of central banks to ease is limited, at a time when the risks are more on the downside than the upside and most people have a dangerous long bias. Said differently, the risks of the world being at or near the end of its long-term debt cycle are significant.
That is what we are most focused on. We believe that is more important than the cyclical influences that the Fed is apparently paying more attention to.
While we don't know if we have just passed the key turning point, we think that it should now be apparent that the risks of deflationary contractions are increasing relative to the risks of inflationary expansion because of these secular forces. These long-term debt cycle forces are clearly having big effects on China, oil producers, and emerging countries which are overly indebted in dollars and holding a huge amount of dollar assets—at the same time as the world is holding large leveraged long positions.
While, in our opinion, the Fed has over-emphasized the importance of the "cyclical" (i.e., the short-term debt/business cycle) and underweighted the importance of the "secular" (i.e., the long-term debt/supercycle), they will react to what happens. Our risk is that they could be so committed to their highly advertised tightening path that it will be difficult for them to change to a significantly easier path if that should be required.
This message is for the named person(s) use only. If you receive this message in error, please immediately delete it and all copies of it from your system and notify the sender. You must not, directly or indirectly use, disclose, distribute, print, or copy any part of this message if you are not the intended recipient. SailingStone Capital Partners LLC reserves the right to monitor all e-mail communications through its networks. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the message states otherwise and the sender is authorized to state them to be the views of any such entity.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6)
6)
Ailes: Trump Should Apologize to Megyn
A peace recently brokered between Fox News Channel and Donald Trump has been shattered.The network's chief executive is taking umbrage with a new volley of insults hurled by the Republican presidential candidate at its star anchor, Megyn Kelly, after the two sides had agreed to maintain a respectful relationship.
Kelly returned to the air last night after taking a scheduled summer vacation. Trump used the occasion to critique her performance.
Kelly returned to the air last night after taking a scheduled summer vacation. Trump used the occasion to critique her performance.
Fox News is not letting it stand.
"Donald Trump's surprise and unprovoked attack on Megyn Kelly during her show last night is as unacceptable as it is disturbing. Megyn Kelly represents the very best of American journalism and all of us at Fox News Channel reject the crude and irresponsible attempts to suggest otherwise," said Roger Ailes, chairman and chief executive of Fox News, in a statement released Tuesday.
"I could not be more proud of Megyn for her professionalism and class in the face of all of Mr. Trump's verbal assaults. Her questioning of Mr. Trump at the debate was tough but fair, and I fully support her as she continues to ask the probing and challenging questions that all presidential candidates may find difficult to answer.
"Donald Trump rarely apologizes, although in this case, he should. We have never been deterred by politicians or anyone else attacking us for doing our job, much less allowed ourselves to be bullied by anyone and we're certainly not going to start now. All of our journalists will continue to report in the fair and balanced way that has made Fox News Channel the number one news network in the industry."
In a statement to Newsmax, Trump responded: "I totally disagree with the Fox statement.
"I do not think Megyn Kelly is a quality journalist," he said. "I think her questioning of me, despite all of the polls saying I won the debate, was very unfair.
"Hopefully in the future, I will be proven wrong and she will be able to elevate her standards to a level of professionalism that a network such as Fox deserves.
"More importantly, I am very pleased to see the latest polls from Public Policy Polling showing me at a strong number one with 35 percent in New Hampshire, the Monmouth University poll showing me, again at number one, with 30 percent in South Carolina and the latest national poll from Gravis, where I am again the clear front runner with 40 percent, " Trump continued. "It was also just announced that I won the prestigious corn kernel poll at the Iowa State Fair by a landslide."
Trump also noted that he would speaking Tuesday night in Iowa, "with my speech being broadcast live on CNN and other networks.
"My sole focus in running for the presidency is to make America great again!"
The two sides had been at odds in the wake of Fox News' broadcast of an Aug. 6 debate among Republican candidates for U.S. President.
During the debate, Megyn Kelly asked Trump if some of the remarks he has made about women in the past might dampen his appeal. Afterwards, Trump made no secret of his dissatisfaction with the line of questioning, proceeding to make some remarks about Kelly that many found offensive.
But Ailes and Trump came to a truce, and Kelly went on a vacation and the matter seemed largely resolved. Trump's remarks today suggest that is no longer the case.
The war of words takes place as Rupert Murdoch, who oversees 21st Century Fox, the parent company of Fox News, recently took to Twitter to suggest Michael Bloomberg, the former Mayor of New York and another billionaire, run for president.
At least 10 fellow Fox News hosts have fired back on social media, including Bret Baier, who co-moderated the first GOP debate with Kelly and Chris Wallace.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Donald Trump's surprise and unprovoked attack on Megyn Kelly during her show last night is as unacceptable as it is disturbing. Megyn Kelly represents the very best of American journalism and all of us at Fox News Channel reject the crude and irresponsible attempts to suggest otherwise," said Roger Ailes, chairman and chief executive of Fox News, in a statement released Tuesday.
"I could not be more proud of Megyn for her professionalism and class in the face of all of Mr. Trump's verbal assaults. Her questioning of Mr. Trump at the debate was tough but fair, and I fully support her as she continues to ask the probing and challenging questions that all presidential candidates may find difficult to answer.
"Donald Trump rarely apologizes, although in this case, he should. We have never been deterred by politicians or anyone else attacking us for doing our job, much less allowed ourselves to be bullied by anyone and we're certainly not going to start now. All of our journalists will continue to report in the fair and balanced way that has made Fox News Channel the number one news network in the industry."
In a statement to Newsmax, Trump responded: "I totally disagree with the Fox statement.
"I do not think Megyn Kelly is a quality journalist," he said. "I think her questioning of me, despite all of the polls saying I won the debate, was very unfair.
"Hopefully in the future, I will be proven wrong and she will be able to elevate her standards to a level of professionalism that a network such as Fox deserves.
"More importantly, I am very pleased to see the latest polls from Public Policy Polling showing me at a strong number one with 35 percent in New Hampshire, the Monmouth University poll showing me, again at number one, with 30 percent in South Carolina and the latest national poll from Gravis, where I am again the clear front runner with 40 percent, " Trump continued. "It was also just announced that I won the prestigious corn kernel poll at the Iowa State Fair by a landslide."
Trump also noted that he would speaking Tuesday night in Iowa, "with my speech being broadcast live on CNN and other networks.
"My sole focus in running for the presidency is to make America great again!"
During the debate, Megyn Kelly asked Trump if some of the remarks he has made about women in the past might dampen his appeal. Afterwards, Trump made no secret of his dissatisfaction with the line of questioning, proceeding to make some remarks about Kelly that many found offensive.
But Ailes and Trump came to a truce, and Kelly went on a vacation and the matter seemed largely resolved. Trump's remarks today suggest that is no longer the case.
The war of words takes place as Rupert Murdoch, who oversees 21st Century Fox, the parent company of Fox News, recently took to Twitter to suggest Michael Bloomberg, the former Mayor of New York and another billionaire, run for president.
At least 10 fellow Fox News hosts have fired back on social media, including Bret Baier, who co-moderated the first GOP debate with Kelly and Chris Wallace.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment