Obama and His Narcissist Driven Beliefs! Subdued 2016!

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I finally met the brother of a friend and fellow memo reader who asked me to place him on my memo list many years ago.

It is always great to finally meet those you have been corresponding with for years and in this case it was a double pleasure because he has had an amazing career and we got a brief opportunity to share some thoughts.  He  sent me this very thoughtful e mail:  " Dick,

N---- and I are back home in R------- B---- now. We want to thank you, albeit belatedly, for so graciously having us into your beautiful home. I particularly liked your den with all its pictures and artifacts. But mostly it was great to be able to meet you in person.

Keep up your informative memos. I look forward to reading them and viewing the cartoons. I am sending along some that were sent to me today. You have seen some, but others might be new to you.

Happy Holidays,

C----"

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The New Year begins in a month and  2016  appears to be bleak.  The Fed will be raising rates in the face of an economic recovery that is, at best, soft.  Obama, the narcissist,  has less than a year to finish his determination to impose  radical changes he hopes cannot be reversed. ISIS will continue to wreak havoc and Obama will continue trying to convince the world  his climate  claims are  based on  indisputable scientific data.

Obama's obsession with climate change is directly attributable to his narcissism. If you recall, I previously posted a discussion by an Israeli Medical Expert on narcissism.  Narcissists believe they see further than us mortals and I suspect Obama believes his concern about climate change is his way of displaying his foresight, brilliance and concern  making him superior than his surrogates and wars.

Neither do I  believe Obama will build an effective coalition though he will continue to claim we are winning the fight. After all, he is above the fray and is superior by reason of the fact that he does not engage in churlish and barbaric behaviour (read wars.)

It is always dangerous to predict a continuance of current trends but as long as Obama remains in office I see no end to attacks on police, Putin giving up his control of The Middle East and his efforts to protect Assad, disruptions on college campuses by radicals though, I do believe the backbone of administrators might begin to stiffen.

Obama will do very little by way of following the advice of his military advisors beyond half measures.  His relations with Congress will remain frosty and he will continue to press forward on his various goals through the use of Executive Orders .Deficit spending will rise as we move towards twenty trillion in debt and our unfunded liabilities will continue to be well over one hundred and twenty trillion.

America is basically broke. However, as long as no one dares call our hand we can and will continue to add more mountains of debt until we no longer can pay the interest because it takes more of GDP leaving little for wealth transfers and entitlements.

The 2016 election should be the nastiest in recent history regardless of who is the Republican candidate because Hillarious knows no other way to campaign.  She has surrounded herself with a cadre of loyal and hungry political goons who will stop at nothing to win.

Americans will remain dispirited and are not about to become enthusiastic about our nation's direction.

As for the stock market I expect another difficult year and do not expect significant earnings growth Thus, I would expect the market to remain volatile and trade in a narrow range.

If a credible Republican wins the Presidency, 2017 could turn out to be the beginning of a reversal of many things but if Hillarious runs and wins I would not be overly enthusiastic about the next four years. Her pronounced policies are not what we need to recover from Obama's disastrous 8 years.

Finally, I would not be surprised to find Israel engaged in another war initiated by various radical groups' rocket launching's  supplied by Iran and who believe they are in a vaulted position to bring about increased Israeli death, destruction and defeat. If this occurs, Israel might be forced to respond in an  overwhelming manner causing unctuousness among the world's hypocrites and anti-Semites.

I would be delighted if I am proven wrong about my subdued view of our nation's  near term prospects. (See 1, 1a and 1b  below.)
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Iran and Obama have run into a legal snag. (See 2 below.)

and

Inconclusive! (See 2a below.)
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Now for some humor:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/6_-xTxP1hD4?autoplay=1

Reagan was corny but he understood America.  Listen all the way to the end and then ask yourself are we missing something?   https://www.youtube.com/embed/wrRTau5jusU

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In the local paper yesterday the headline read: " Nations meet to stop the world from overheating."

Perhaps if politicians would stop talking and quit meeting to discuss unscientific nonsense the world would cool down but then they would miss traveling in jets which disgorge pollution and taking meals in some of the fanciest restaurants while thousands guard them as they stuff their mouths, sip wine, clink glasses and spend and waste  a  lot of our money.

When they had the G 8 meeting in Savannah, several years ago,  the politicians  cleared the area of local shrimp, made fancy speeches , accomplished nothing and went home. 

Can anyone tell me what they talked about, resolved ?  Is the world better off for their having met?
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Dick
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1)

This math exercise will only take you about ten seconds.

Amazingly, it really works and will reveal your all-time

favorite movie. Just do it and trust me that this is worth your time.

I'm pretty good at math, so I did it in my head, then on

paper, and finally on a calculator just to confirm my

numerical capabilities. Each time I got the same answer, and sure enough it IS my very favorite movie.  

DO NOT cheat. DO YOUR math, THEN compare the results to the list of  movies at the bottom You will be AMAZED at how scary true and accurate this test is. 

1. Pick a number from 1-9. 

2. Multiply that number by 3 

3. Add 3 

4. Multiply by 3 again 

5. Your total will be a two digit number. Add the first and

second digits together to find your favorite movie (of all

time) in the list of 17 movies below.

Movie List: 

1. Gone With the Wind

2. E.T 

3. Blazing Saddles 

4. Star Wars

5. Forrest Gump 

6. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly 

7. Jaws 

8. Grease 

9. The Obama Farewell Speech 

10. Casablanca 

11. Jurassic Park 

12. Shrek 

13. Pirates of the Caribbean 

14. Titanic 

15. Raiders of the Lost Ark 

16. Home Alone 

17. Mrs. Doubtfire 

Now, isn't that something?

1a)

Liberalism’s Imaginary Enemies

In Paris, it’s easier to battle a climate crisis than confront jihadists on the streets.

By Bret Stephens

Little children have imaginary friends. Modern liberalism has imaginary enemies.
Hunger in America is an imaginary enemy. Liberal advocacy groups routinely claim that one in seven Americans is hungry—in a country where the poorest counties have the highest rates of obesity. The statistic is a preposterous extrapolation from a dubious Agriculture Department measure of “food insecurity.” But the line gives those advocacy groups a reason to exist while feeding the liberal narrative of America as a savage society of haves and have nots.

The campus-rape epidemic—in which one in five female college students is said to be the victim of sexual assault—is an imaginary enemy. Never mind the debunked rape scandals at Duke and the University of Virginia, or the soon-to-be-debunked case at the heart of “The Hunting Ground,” a documentary about an alleged sexual assault at Harvard Law School. The real question is: If modern campuses were really zones of mass predation—Congo on the quad—why would intelligent young women even think of attending a coeducational school? They do because there is no epidemic. But the campus-rape narrative sustains liberal fictions of a never-ending war on women.

Institutionalized racism is an imaginary enemy. Somehow we’re supposed to believe that the same college administrators who have made a religion of diversity are really the second coming of Strom Thurmond. Somehow we’re supposed to believe that twice electing a black president is evidence of our racial incorrigibility. We’re supposed to believe this anyway because the future of liberal racialism—from affirmative action to diversity quotas to slavery reparations—requires periodic sightings of the ghosts of a racist past.

I mention these examples by way of preface to the climate-change summit that began this week in Paris. But first notice a pattern.

Dramatic crises—for which evidence tends to be anecdotal, subjective, invisible, tendentious and sometimes fabricated—are trumpeted on the basis of incompetently designed studies, poorly understood statistics, or semantic legerdemain. Food insecurity is not remotely the same as hunger. An abusive cop does not equal a bigoted police department. An unwanted kiss or touch is not the same as sexual assault, at least if the word assault is to mean anything.

Yet bogus studies and statistics survive because the cottage industries of compassion need them to be believed, and because mindless repetition has a way of making things nearly true, and because dramatic crises require drastic and all-encompassing solutions. Besides, the thinking goes, falsehood and exaggeration can serve a purpose if it induces virtuous behavior. The more afraid we are of the shadow of racism, the more conscious we might become of our own unsuspected biases.
And so to Paris.

I’m not the first to notice the incongruity of this huge gathering of world leaders meeting to combat a notional enemy in the same place where a real enemy just inflicted so much mortal damage.

Then again, it’s also appropriate, since reality-substitution is how modern liberalism conducts political business. What is the central liberal project of the 21st century, if not to persuade people that climate change represents an infinitely greater threat to human civilization than the barbarians—sorry, violent extremists—of Mosul and Molenbeek? Why overreact to a few hundred deaths today when hundreds of thousands will be dead in a century or two if we fail to act now?

Here again the same dishonest pattern is at work. The semantic trick in the phrase “climate change”—allowing every climate anomaly to serve as further proof of the overall theory. The hysteria generated by an imperceptible temperature rise of 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880—as if the trend is bound to continue forever, or is not a product of natural variation, or cannot be mitigated except by drastic policy interventions. The hyping of flimsy studies—melting Himalayan glaciers; vanishing polar ice—to press the political point. The job security and air of self-importance this provides the tens of thousands of people—EPA bureaucrats, wind-turbine manufacturers, litigious climate scientists, NGO gnomes—whose livelihoods depend on a climate crisis. The belief that even if the crisis isn’t quite what it’s cracked up to be, it does us all good to be more mindful about the environment.

And, of course, the chance to switch the subject. If your enemy is global jihad, then to defeat it you need military wherewithal, martial talents and political will. If your enemy is the structure of an energy-intensive global economy, then you need a compelling justification to change it. Climate dystopia can work wonders, provided the jihadists don’t interrupt too often.

Here’s a climate prediction for the year 2115: Liberals will still be organizing campaigns against yet another mooted social or environmental crisis. Temperatures will be about the same.


1b)

The Climate for the Constitution

By JONATHAN S. TOBIN 

President Obama is in full legacy mode this week as he proclaimed America’s share of the guilt for climate change. Obama’s speech at the Paris climate conference was an effort to appease developing nations like India that have no interest in being asked to limit their economic growth as part of a solution to the problem that the president seriously believes is a bigger threat to the world than terrorism. So in order to be able to have posterity look upon him as the man who, as he grandiloquently claimed in 2008, would slow “the rise of the oceans,” he promised the West would help fund the efforts of poorer nations to comply with the emissions restrictions he hopes will be agreed upon in Paris. That appears to be a promise to fulfill Hillary Clinton’s 2010 promise — when she was Obama’s secretary of state — that developed nations would annually fork over $100 billion to the undeveloped world to compensate them for such a scheme in what many in the Third World see as “reparations” for the West’s climate sins. That’s a hefty financial commitment, and that’s not even taking into account the vast cost to the American economy that will be exacted if Obama gets the agreement he wants.

Even if we ignore, as Obama and the liberal mainstream media insist we must, any skepticism from the scientific world about the assumptions that are the foundation of this new world climate order, there is an interesting question about all this diplomacy that virtually no one is asking: Why will a pact that will have such a far-reaching impact on the American economy and that will create a vast new federal entitlement not be submitted to Congress for approval? Did someone amend the Constitution while we were dozing and allow the president to conclude treaties on his own without having to submit them, as the Constitution mandates, for the advice and consent of the Senate?

The answer to that question is so painfully obvious that few feel the need to mention it. As Secretary of State John Kerry noted in his testimony to Congress about the Iran nuclear deal — another treaty that the administration chose not to consider a treaty — it’s just too hard to get 67 votes for something the White House and the foreign policy establishment supports. So rather than do the hard political work of persuading Congress of the wisdom of a pact the president supports, Obama chooses to ignore the Constitution and commit the United States to deals that will impact the lives of ordinary Americans without bespeaking the permission of their representatives and Senators as the Founding Fathers insisted he must.

In the case of Iran, that led to an upside down approval process that allowed Obama to pass the most consequential foreign policy treaty in a generation with the votes of only 42 Democrats rather than the 67 senators he should have been required to persuade. That he did so without coming clean about possible side deals that ought to render the pact illegal is beside the point. That weak and likely unenforceable deal will endanger the U.S. and its allies. But in the case of the climate deal, we’re not talking about potential threats to our security that Democrats are prepared to leave to their successors when the agreement expires. For all of the overheated rhetoric about the climate that we’re hearing this week, which ignores any of the skepticism emanating from the scientific community about the assumptions that are the foundation of the effort, it’s important to remember that what may be agreed to in Paris is very much a domestic bread and butter issue for Americans. Indeed, it may well have an even more serious impact on the economy and on the ability of ordinary Americans to make a living than any of the free lunch schemes Clinton and Bernie Sanders are promoting to gain the votes of Democratic primary voters.

Yet unlike the Iran deal, which at least had a sham approval process that allowed the country to debate the issue even if the opposition of the majority wasn’t enough to stop it, the administration will treat whatever comes out of Paris as not the business of a meddling Congress.

Seen from the point of view of the White House, this stance is eminently defensible. The president really does believe lowering carbon emissions is a matter of life and death, more so than the threat of actual death from ISIS terrorists. As such, he thinks any means are legitimate and necessary to obtain the result he believes is right. If saving the planet means ignoring the Constitution, then as far as he is concerned, so much the worse for the Constitution.

Of course, the president is no stranger to this sort of reasoning. His rationale for ignoring the Constitution on illegal immigration was no different. His executive orders that would — if the federal courts do not continue to thwart him – grant effective amnesty to as many as five million illegals were justified by the administration on the grounds that Congress had refused to pass bills that might do the same thing.

President Obama isn’t the first president to use executive orders in this manner or even to agree to treaties that he doesn’t submit to Congress. But the scope of his actions exceeds that of any precedent previously set. If a climate treaty that is not called a treaty, but which will place the U.S. under these kinds of onerous obligations is put into effect without even the fig leaf of an approval process, then we will have truly taken a step toward a kind of presidential government that is utterly alien to the model of representative democracy that is the foundation of the American constitutional system.

At such moments, it’s apt to remember that the Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the Constitution specifically states that the power of the president to make treaties is specifically limited to those that have the support of two-thirds of the Senate. Moreover, as Alexander Hamilton stated in the Federalist Papers, the reason for this provision is that to give to presidents that are no more than “elective magistrates” the “entire power of making treaties” would be to give them the status of a “hereditary monarch.”

Such concerns may seem minor to a president that is so convinced of the righteousness of his cause that he thinks it beneath his dignity to actually defend or debate the wisdom of his ideas. And since he believes midterm elections that go against his party are somehow not as legitimate as presidential votes that he wins, he thinks any deference to the Constitution that would give the Senate a say would be somehow wrong.

Let’s concede that any deal rammed through in this manner won’t have the force of law and can be ignored or rejected by Obama’s successor. But if we allow this precedent to pass unnoticed, we will be merely reinforcing a new reality in which the whims of any president will be sovereign rather than the rule of law.

Whatever you may think about climate change or its relative importance when compared to the threat of terrorism, the process by which Obama is effectively abrogating the Constitution’s Treaty Clause ought to scare you. A president that can do anything he likes simply because he won’t be limited to legislation passed by Congress is one that can justify any act no matter how illegal because of what he thinks are his good intentions. In any constitutional republic, that’s the thin edge of the wedge of tyranny. While we argue about global warming and the short shrift given by this administration to the need to defeating ISIS, we ought to spare a moment for the way any climate deal will be imposed on the nation.

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2) Salomon Center Fellow Joshua Sharf reports in JNS that the presidents signing bonus to the Mullah's in Tehran, may be hitting a legal snag.

Obama’s ‘signing bonus’ to Iran hits legal snag

By Joshua Sharf/JNS.org

Iran may need to wait a while to collect its $150 billion “signing bonus” in this year’s nuclear deal with the P5+1 nations.

As part of July’s nuclear deal, President Barack Obama agreed to release Iranian assets that have been frozen in U.S. banks since the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979. But Shurat HaDin - Israel Law Center, a non-profit legal assistance group based in Tel Aviv, has sent a letter to 11 American banks warning them that releasing the money now would be a violation of a current U.S. court order intended to compensate victims of Iran-sponsored terrorism. 

The banks addressed in the letter are believed to be holding frozen Iranian assets, and awaiting certification by the administration than Iran has met certain preliminary benchmarks for the release of that money.

U.S. courts, however, have awarded judgments to a number of American families against the Iranian government as victims of terrorism perpetrated by Iran-sponsored terror groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.

One such case dates back to Sept. 4, 1997, when Hamas executed triple suicide bombings on the Ben Yehuda Street pedestrian mall in Jerusalem. The attack killed five Israelis and severely injured a number of Americans.

Families of those Americans injured in the bombing filed suit against the Iranian regime for damages. Iran is a financial and military patron of Hamas. The case, Rubin v. The Islamic Republic of Iran, was decided in favor of the plaintiffs. Yet previous efforts to attach certain Iranian assets, notably museum artifacts being repatriated to Iran, have failed. A number of courts have ruled that historical artifacts are not exempt from sovereign immunity, and thus cannot be seized to make payment.

Cash, however, appears to be another matter.

On Oct. 26, the plaintiffs obtained a Citation to Discover Assets in the federal district court in the Northern District of Illinois. The granting of this proceeding takes the plaintiffs’ case one step further, in that it permits them to discover what assets the Iranian government has frozen in the U.S., for the purposes of collecting the judgment against them.

“Because Iran hired counsel in the antiquities proceeding in Chicago, we had the chance to serve their attorneys with the citation. As a result we can act to restrain the banks from releasing funds,” says Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, director of Shurat HaDin.

Those accounts are not a matter of public record. This has led to some confusion about the amount that could actually end up being repatriated to the Iranian government under the terms of the deal.

Shurat HaDin’s letter to the 11 U.S. banks states, “You are hereby warned that all accounts maintained by your financial institution at any of its branches in the name of Iran, the Central Bank of Iran, the Naftiran Intertrade Company, the National Iranian Oil Company, the National Iranian Tanker Company or any other agency or instrumentality of Iran are restrained and subject to a lien in favor of my clients under United States law.”

Shurat HaDin notes that, to date, $43 billion has been awarded to U.S. victims of Iranian-sponsored terror, and that if that money leaves the country, there is little to no chance that those claims will ever be paid.

For Darshan-Leitner, this isn’t just a legal matter—it’s a moral one.  

“They want to ensure that what happened to these people doesn’t happen to other innocent families,” she says. “We all understand that allowing these frozen funds to be returned to Tehran ensures that terror groups like Hamas and Hezbollah will have the resources to continue their extremist violence against Jews and Westerners. After Paris, could you imagine providing a $100 billion to ISIS (Islamic State)? This is the exact same situation.”


2a)The International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) investigation into Iran’s past nuclear weapons work is likely to remain inconclusive, while the US is expected to refrain from insisting on full disclosure, according to an AP analysis published on Monday.

 Iran has for years stonewalled the IAEA and refused to provide the agency with access to sites, people, and information related to the possible military dimensions (PMDs) of its nuclear program. In a statement last Thursday about the report, IAEA head Yukiya Amano said, “we are not in a position to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities.”

Secretary of State John Kerry has previously stated that if there’s going to be a deal, Iran will have to come clean on its past nuclear work. However, the administration’s position has since shifted and the AP analysis released on Monday states that the administration “is signaling that it is prepared to shut an eye” regarding Iran’s past military nuclear activities. According to another AP report, two diplomats indicated that although Iran is expected to continue to deny its weaponization activities, the U.S. and the other members of the P5+1 are unlikely to be too critical of Iran, fearing that this would jeopardize the nuclear deal. Top Iranian officials have threatened that Iran will not abide by the agreement unless the IAEA closes its investigation. Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi accidentally revealed his strategy in August, stating that his country’s threats “will cause the Westerners themselves to pressure the IAEA to wrap up the case as soon as possible, so that the deal could be implemented.”

The administration reportedly believes that Iranian disclosure “is unlikely and unnecessary.” However, lack of knowledge regarding Iran’s PMDs will undermine the IAEA’s ability to design an effective verification system, calculate Iran’s breakout time, and ensure that activities related to the development of nuclear weapons have ceased. President of the Institute for Science and International Security David Albright has warned that “ambiguity over Iran’s nuclear weaponization accomplishments and residual capabilities risks rendering an agreement unverifiable by the IAEA.” His institute tweeted: “Iran demands closure of PMD file ==> Iran should fully come clean about what it did.” Furthermore, Emily Landau, the Institute for National Security Studies’ top arms control expert argues that exposing Iran’s past military nuclear activities is essential in order to counter Iran’s false narrative and expose its intent to develop nuclear weapons.

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