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AIPAC ain't to blame according to Tobin. (See 1 below.)
You decide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDpNKHvVAms
I admit to a gross error. I have maintained Obama, the acclaimed Constitutional Adjunct Professor, was ignorant when it came to knowing our Constitution. In fact he does know a great deal about our Constitution. The problem is, he has used this knowledge not to uphold its intent but to subvert its intent.
The latest example is his avoidance of the demands of the treaty process. Instead he manipulated words and called his nefarious efforts, with respect to Iran, a "Deal," then went to the U.N instead of Congress in order to, as with Obama Care, shove this rotten fish down our throats, bones and all.
Once again our dictator president has thrown the gauntlet down and won because Demwits chose loyalty to party over common sense, morality and nation. The ball is now on the Republican side of the net. Will they challenge Obama as a recent Federal Judge has claimed they have the legal right to do?
Putin feels no restraints as he moves troop into Syria.
Stay tuned.
http://prageruniversity.com/
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Kim has put her finger on something revealing.
After wandering in the desert Conservatives have finally got a list of candidates with merit and yet, they have turned to "Whatever" as the answer.
Sometimes one's frustrations cloud their ability to see they have reached the promised land. Is this now the case with those within the Conservative ranks who, out of frustration, have turned to Trump which could lead them to shooting themselves in the foot instead of wearing the boots they have to kick the Demwits out of office.
Trump deserves credit for being relevant, for widening the debate, for touching third rails but he is undeserving of being president. There are several more qualified candidates who are entitled to a serious look and allowing the media and print folks to decide who is the Republican Nominee would be a sure way to lose because they are interested in controversy and profiting from its consequences.
They have proven, time and again, they do not have the nation's best interest uppermost in their biased pursuits.
I am not a conspiratorial person by nature but I do believe "Ole" Bill put the bug in Donald's ear to run so he could muck up matters and thereby, take some of the heat off Hillarious.
Time will tell. (See 2 below.)
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Russia moves into Syria and thumbs nose at Kerry and then Obama. (See 3 below.)
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Welcome to America's new life style? (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1)
It’s been open season on AIPAC since the moment when it became clear that opponents of the Iran nuclear deal wouldn’t be able to stop it in Congress. Today’s vote in the Senate, in which 42 Democrats filibustered a motion of disapproval, marks the formal end to the struggle, but for weeks critics of the umbrella pro-Israel group have been taking pot shots at it over the result. They say AIPAC made a big mistake by following the lead of the Israeli government in going all out to oppose the deal. They also accuse it of damaging the bipartisan pro-Israel coalition in Congress and being out of step with a lot of American Jews. One of the most prominent of such critics is Tom Dine, who served as AIPAC’s executive director. Dine writes in Foreign Affairs that the Iran deal is “AIPAC’s Waterloo” and compares it unfavorably to the group’s only other significant defeat — the 1981 battle over the sale of AWACS planes to Saudi Arabia — that he presided over. But the problem with Dine’s analysis is not limited to that misleading comparison. Dine is dead wrong not only about which side injected partisanship into the debate. He also fails to explain the difference between past battles with other administration and the current dust up with Obama. When faced with a choice between opposing a Democratic president and standing with Israel, this time liberal Jews chose the former.
As the former leader of the group, Dine has some standing to comment on it, but his opinion must be placed in context. He was forced out of his position at AIPAC after he was quoted making disparaging remarks about Orthodox Jews and is still bitter about what happened. Moreover, while AIPAC is a bipartisan organization with strong support from both Democrats and Republicans, since he left AIPAC, Dine has been openly identified with the political left. Today he works for the Israel Policy Forum, a group that is critical of the current Israeli government. Not surprisingly, Dine is a supporter of the Iran deal, and everything he says about the Israelis and AIPAC must be seen in that light.
That said, there is no denying that, on Iran, Obama won and his critics lost. But those seeking to exploit this result to denigrate AIPAC need to put this in perspective. It should be remembered that, far from illustrating AIPAC’s declining influence, the majority of both Houses of Congress actually agree with AIPAC on the issue. Moreover, polls consistently show that large majorities of Americans also oppose the deal. The only reason why the deal is surviving is due to a reverse ratification process that sidestepped the constitutional provision requiring two-thirds of the Senate to vote in favor of the pact. Instead, by brazenly claiming it required no Congressional approval at all and then agreeing to the Corker-Cardin compromise that let the president prevail with only the one-third plus one votes, needed to sustain a veto. Anyone who thinks this shows that Obama’s left-wing cheerleaders at J Street have more influence on Capitol Hill than AIPAC needs math lessons.
As for the analogy to the AWACS controversy, there are some similarities. Both of these disputes involved Israeli governments and their American supporters taking on an American president who seemed to be prioritizing a relationship with a Muslim nation over friendship with Israel. The radar planes were thought to be game-changing military assets, and less than eight years after the Yom Kippur War — which turned out to be the last time Arab nations would take on Israel in a conventional war — this was seen as potentially tipping the balance of power.
As it turned out, the Saudis, though relentlessly hostile to Israel, had no interest in fighting it. Instead, they were, with good reason worried more about Iran and Iraq. More to the point, they still are since the Saudis are, at least privately, as upset about Obama’s appeasement of Iran as the Israelis.
The AWACS defeat was a seminal moment for AIPAC because it was after that the lobby realized it had to prioritize building support for Israel in Congress on both sides of the aisle. Since then, its influence has grown to the point where it is demonized as an all-powerful tale wagging the dog of the American government even though its resources still pale before those of many commercial special interests.
It is true that party lines played a big role in the outcome of the debate on Iran, but the charge repeated by Dine that AIPAC and the Netanyahu government injected partisanship into the issue is dead wrong. Up until this year, there was a strong bipartisan consensus in Congress on Iran that backed even tougher sanctions than the ones Obama is dismantling. It was not broken up by Israel or AIPAC but by the president. The only lever he had to rally Democrats to support him on the issue was party loyalty, and it was highly effective. Against a sitting president who remains very popular among his party’s left-wing base, AIPAC never had a chance. If anything they deserve credit for ensuring that there were no Republican defections and that a number of prominent Democrats defied the president.
But Dine is right about one thing. Obama was successful in rallying a critical mass of American Jews to his side despite the pleas of Israel’s government and AIPAC. How did that happen? It’s true that the Netanyahu government is not that popular among liberal Jews. But Dine should remember that the government of Menachem Begin had just as much trouble getting liberal Jewish groups that viewed him with distaste to back its policies.
The crucial difference here is that Begin’s opponent in the White House was a Republican while Netanyahu’s was a Democrat. The same measure applies to the other significant conflict in Congress between AIPAC and an American president. In 1991, an Israeli government, led by Yitzhak Shamir, that was just as unpopular as that of Netanyahu challenged President George H.W. Bush when he sought to deny loan guarantees to the Jewish state needed for immigrant absorption after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Bush smeared AIPAC in terms that bore a resemblance to anti-Semitic tropes about Jewish power and money and a united American Jewish community condemned him. But when Obama used similar language to that of the elder Bush, liberal Jews defended him rather than joining with the president’s critics. Partisan loyalty among a demographic group that is second only to African-Americans as the most loyal to the Democrats was the decisive factor.
Over the last 35 years, the two parties largely switched positions on Israel. Whereas in 1981, Democrats could be counted on as fervent supporters of the Jewish state, now their base is largely hostile to it even though most members of the House and Senate still term themselves friends of Israel. Many Republicans were still hostile to the Jewish state at the time of the AWACS fight. Now support for Israel in the party is nearly universal. Yet rather than lamenting the willingness of so many Democrats to put party over principle when they backed Obama, they now criticize the GOP for being loyal to it.
Had a Republican president struck an Iran deal as bad as that agreed to by Obama, there’s little doubt that the same liberal Democrats that are voting today with their party’s leader would be calling the deal a betrayal and vowing to fight it to the end. AIPAC can always count on a united Jewish community being willing to fight a Republican, but it can never hope to beat a Democrat who challenges Israel.
Rather than bash AIPAC for not being able to persuade more Democrats to oppose Obama, friends of Israel need to realize the real problem. Though many Democrats are ardent supporters of the Jewish state, many in the party’s left-wing rank and file are not. The task of rebuilding the U.S.-Israel alliance that Obama has done so much to damage must start with recognizing that liberal Democrats are the ones who have lost their way, not the pro-Israel community.
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2)
The GOP’s ‘Whatever’ Moment
Demoralized conservatives are finally getting a real choice, but they’re settling for Donald Trump.
Before the first main-event Republican presidential debate, Aug. 6. PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
“Whatever” is The Donald’s response whenever or wherever he confronts something that he doesn’t like or understand. It’s a way out of taking a position: Does he support D.C. statehood? He’ll do “whatever is good for the District of Columbia.” (Whatever that is.)
It’s a way of ending discussion on a topic he can’t remember, or never knew in the first place. (“I stand by whatever I read.” Next.)
It’s a stand-alone, irritated dismissal. (Mr. Trump, what say you to the argument that most of your proposals are legally or politically or geophysically impossible? Whatever.)
Imagine a Marco Rubio or a Jeb Bush explaining that his position on Iran is to do whatever is terrific. It’s not simply that they couldn’t get away with it. It’s that it wouldn’t occur to them to try. And that’s the great disconnect of this current race. The conservative electorate is thrilling to a “whatever” moment just as it is finally getting the quality candidates and substantive debate it has spent years demanding.
That electorate threw its heart into GOP primaries that cleared out dead wood and sent new blood to Washington. It threw its soul into delivering a new crop of young reformers to state houses and governors’ mansions. It fumed as the party blew two presidential elections, and it made clear it expected far better.
Slowly, the effort paid off. This Republican field is teeming with serious candidates (many elected in response to Mr. Obama) who’ve collectively beaten public unions, reformed pensions, cut spending and taxes, overhauled education, and embraced the energy boom. It’s a talent pool that contains a neurosurgeon, a businesswoman, a Rhodes scholar, a prosecutor, and several state executives—not one of whom looks remotely like Mitt Romney or John McCain. And not one of whom teamed up with a state casino authority to try to seize a woman’s property, to make way for a Trump hotel limousine parking lot. But, whatever.
Mr. Bush this week released a pro-growth tax plan, one that offered specific details on everything from deduction caps to expensing rules. It’s the product of decades of accumulated tax-reform wisdom, and it joins at least two separate proposals for a flat tax (Rand Paul, Ben Carson) and two more that would flatten the code (Mr. Rubio, Chris Christie). Mr. Trump’s own tax plan consists of a vague promise to raise taxes on Wall Street “paper pushers,” a position that won him rave reviews from liberals like Elizabeth Warren. But, whatever.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Mr. Rubio have offered comprehensive health-care proposals. All accomplish the burning conservative goal of killing ObamaCare, though they take different approaches to instituting a free-market system. This is a great debate—if we will have it. Instead, as much as 44% of the conservative electorate is now open to the single-payer system that Bernie Sandersadvocates because Mr. Trump says it “works incredibly well in Scotland.” It doesn’t work, of course. In Scotland. Or anywhere. In the universe. But. What. Ever.
Despite claims otherwise, GOP candidates have responded to the base’s frustration on immigration. Nearly every candidate has now put a priority on securing the border and tackling sanctuary cities. They’ve supplemented this with an array of thoughtful ideas, on how to deal with current illegals, whom in the future to let in, and how to track them. These proposals are the makings of a highly sophisticated immigration renovation. Mr. Trump’s solution is to build a wall. An idea the Chinese were onto more than 2,000 years ago. But, whatever.
Lindsey Graham and Mr. Rubio and Rand Paul are jump-starting the first real GOP foreign-policy debate in a decade, deliberating the contours of intervention and ways to renew American global power. Mr. Trump suggests seizing Iraqi oil fields, much in the behavior of ISIS. The proceeds Mr. Trump would give to our “wounded warriors,” presumably via the Veterans Administration, which has been accused by its own inspector general of allowing 307,000 soldiers to die while waiting for the agency to notice them. And for which Mr. Trump has no reform plan, unlike some of his rivals. But, really, people. Whatever.
None of this is to dismiss the rage so many Americans feel over government. Or to overlook that this is Mr. Trump’s appeal. Conservatives have become so demoralized by the Obama state, so frustrated by the inability to check it, so tired of overpromising Republicans, that they just want someone to blow up everything. Mr. Trump says he will, and so they’re good with “whatever.”
Yet this frustration has peaked right as the base is finally getting a real choice—finally getting candidates with ideas, and finally getting the potential for a nominee who could have the smarts and experience and mandate to set the federal government on an entirely new course. Conservatives have worked hard to get to this moment. They deserve better than a “whatever.”
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3)
3)
Russia's Syrian Air Base Has U.S. Scrambling for a Plan
The Barack Obama administration and the U.S. intelligence community have concluded that Russia is set to start flying combat missions from a new air base inside Syria, but there’s disagreement inside the U.S. government on what to do about it.
Thursday at the White House, top officials were scheduled to meet at the National Security Council Deputies Committee level to discuss how to respond to the growing buildup of Russian military equipment and personnel in Latakia, a city on the Syrian coast controlled by the Bashar al-Assad regime. Obama has called on his national security officials to come up with a plan as early as next week, as intelligence reports pour in about the Russian plans to set up an air base there. The options are to try to confront Russia inside Syria or, as some in the White House are advocating, cooperate with Russia there on the fight against the Islamic State.
The State Department had already begun pushing back against the Russian moves, for example by asking Bulgaria and Greece to deny overflight permissions to Syria-bound Russian transport planes. But the president didn't know about these moves in advance, two officials said, and when he found out, he was upset with the department for not having a more complete and vetted process to respond to the crisis. A senior administration official said Thursday evening that the White House, the State Department and other departments had coordinated to oppose actions that would add to Assad's leverage.
For some in the White House, the priority is to enlist more countries to fight against the Islamic State, and they fear making the relationship with Russia any more heated. They are seriously considering accepting the Russian buildup as a fait accompli, and then working with Moscow to coordinate U.S. and Russian strikes in Northern Syria, where the U.S.-led coalition operates every day.
For many in the Obama administration, especially those who work on Syria, the idea of acquiescing to Russian participation in the fighting is akin to admitting that the drive to oust Assad has failed. Plus, they fear Russia will attack Syrian opposition groups that are fighting against Assad, using the war against the Islamic State as a cover.
“The Russians’ intentions are to keep Assad in power, not to fight ISIL,” one administration official said. “They’ve shown their cards now.”
The U.S. intelligence now shows that Russia is planning to send a force into Syria that is capable of striking targets on the ground. Two U.S. officials told me that the intelligence community has collected evidence that Russia plans to deploy Mikoyan MiG 31 and Sukhoi Su-25 fighter planes to Latakia in the coming days and weeks. The military equipment that has already arrived includes air traffic control towers, aircraft maintenance supplies, and housing units for hundreds of personnel.
Secretary of State John Kerry called Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov last Saturday to urge him to halt the Russian military buildup, but the Russian told Kerry that his military was doing nothing wrong and that Russia’s support for Syria would continue, according to one official who saw a readout of the call. That response was seen inside the administration as a rebuke of Kerry’s efforts to reach out to Moscow to restart the Syrian political process. Kerry met with Lavrov and the Saudi foreign minister on the issue last month.
This is a turn of events from the situation this summer. In July, Russian President Vladimir Putin called Obama and according to Obama, Putin was moving away from a weakened Assad.
“I think they get a sense that the Assad regime is losing a grip over greater and greater swaths of territory inside of Syria [to Sunni jihadist militias] and that the prospects for a [Sunni jihadist] takeover or rout of the Syrian regime is not imminent but becomes a greater and greater threat by the day,” Obama told the New York Times. “That offers us an opportunity to have a serious conversation with them.”
But since then, Putin has been moving away from a serious conversation with the U.S. about a diplomatic solution in Syria. Just as the Russian military buildup was beginning last week, Putin said publicly that Assad was ready to engage with the “healthy” opposition, a far cry from the process the U.S. is promoting, which would bring the Western-supported Syrian opposition into a new round of negotiations with the regime.
“Russia’s support for the Assad regime is not helpful at all, it’s counterproductive, and it’s against some of the things they have said about trying to bring about a solution,” Senator Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told me Wednesday. “It’s disappointing, but it’s been consistent with some of the policies they’ve done in the past that we think are just wrong.”
Putin is planning to focus on the fight against “terrorism” in his speech later this month at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Russia will also host a ministerial-level meeting on the sidelines about fighting extremism, which it defines as including all the groups fighting the Assad regime, including the U.S.-backed rebels.
There is concern inside the Obama administration, even among those who advocate for confronting Russian actions in Syria, that the U.S. has no real leverage to fight back. If Obama decides not to accept the Russian air force presence in Syria, he would have several options, all of which have drawbacks or limitations.
The U.S. could impose new sanctions on Russia, although the current punishments related to Ukraine have not changed Putin’s calculus, and there’s little chance European countries would join in on a new round. The U.S. might warn Russia that its base is fair game for the opposition to attack, but that could spur Putin to double down on the deployment. The U.S. could try to stop the flow of Russian arms, but that would mean pressuring countries such as Iraq to stand up to Putin and Iran, which they might not agree to.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said Wednesday he would try to impose sanctions on Russia from the Congressional side if the administration doesn’t move in that direction. He said that Russia’s military involvement in Syria will only make the terrorism threat and the refugee problems emanating from there worse.
“This is a chance for us to slap Russia hard, because what they are doing is making America less safe,” he said. “The Russians are just slapping President Obama and Secretary Kerry in the face. This is a complete insult to their efforts to try to find a solution to Syria. They’ve made Assad’s survivability more likely, which means the war in Syria never ends.”
The White House’s concerns about escalating tensions with Russia inside Syria are legitimate, but cooperating with Russian forces on the ground or in the air would undermine whatever remaining credibility the U.S. has with the Syrian opposition and the Gulf States that support it. The U.S. may not be able to stop Russia’s entry into fighting the Syrian civil war, but at a minimum America shouldn't be seen as colluding with Moscow. If that happens, the suspicion that Obama is actually working to preserve the Assad regime will have been confirmed.
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