Stella, in the middle, with her "cubby friends" who learned about "bats" this week.
I thought she was too young to learn about the "ding bats" in Congress but guess not.
===
The way to wreck a Republic is through indebtedness to the point that cut backs are forced and its ability to defend itself, its vital commercial interests and foreign commitments are diminished.
Next set citizen against citizen and then destroy academic freedom and speech.
Finally, allow our adversaries to develop weaponry capable of destroying us, ie. N Korea, Iran, ISIS etc.
Obama has accomplished all four of these objectives and the worst is yet to come even though he is running out of time. (See 1 below.)
But then he has his sidekick to help. (See 1a below.)
===
This from someone I love and who is an off again on again memo reader:
"I hope they can nail Hillary with something irrefutable that even the liberals
can't deny.
Then the Republican President can use this as their campaign song:
For she's a jolly good felon, for she's a jolly good felon
for she's a jolly good felon, that even the libs can't deny."
"I replied libs live in denial. It's in their DNA."
===
Strassel believes it is time for Carson to get detailed.
Debates are fine, in terms of allowing the viewer to gain insights into how the candidate handles himself etc. However, unless they are wiling to go beyond displaying debating skills and refrain from expressing substance, in the end, they are not likely to gain much traction with voters and certainly not this one.
The same can be said for Trump. We know he does not like to be criticized, we learned he has a huge ego and we have been told what he intends to do but it takes more than mere words for voters to get a feel for how he plans to accomplish his words.
Until all the candidates get down to brass tacks they are asking us to buy a pig in a poke. We have done that before and look where it got us - deeper in debt and doo doo!
Those who wish to lead owe us more and this is why I am still listening and hoping I will get some meat on the bones.
Until I do I will wait for Godot! (See 2 below.)
===
I attended a lecture Thursday evening by a Harvard Professor, Dr. Tobey. He discussed, in a balanced and dispassionate matter, the Iran Deal.. He began by listing four advantages and then listed the disadvantages. He concluded by indicating he did not believe the issue was settled and that we could have gotten a better deal had we applied more pressure.
He thought Iran agreed to the deal because they were seeking the lifting of sanctions, the ability to eventually go nuclear and to conduct increased commerce.
Personally, I see no advantages because it is a faith based agreement with a nation of liars so anything they agreed to is highly suspect because they will disavow all the terms when it suits them. Furthermore, we have proven we will cave and even if we do not China and Russia will run interference for Iran and block any of our challenges.
I do not trust Obama any more than I do the Ayatollh. (See 3 below.)
===
Eventually Americans will be attacked by radical Islamists here and when that happens perhaps they will understand why Israel is unwilling to make any agreement with those who are out to destroy them and why they reject Obama and Kerry's unilateralism garbage. (See 4 an 4a below.)
===
Totally agree. (See 5 below.)
===
Outcome of Netanyahu meeting with Obama:
Now that The Middle East is imploding Obama agreed with Netanyahu that America should begin discussions on Israel's needs going forward for the next ten years. so it can defend itself by itself.
In essence Obama remains willing to provide Israel with larger gloves in order to defend itself while Obama allows our collective enemies to become more capable of increased destruction as Iran expands its assistance to its radical allies.
===
DickStrassel believes it is time for Carson to get detailed.
Debates are fine, in terms of allowing the viewer to gain insights into how the candidate handles himself etc. However, unless they are wiling to go beyond displaying debating skills and refrain from expressing substance, in the end, they are not likely to gain much traction with voters and certainly not this one.
The same can be said for Trump. We know he does not like to be criticized, we learned he has a huge ego and we have been told what he intends to do but it takes more than mere words for voters to get a feel for how he plans to accomplish his words.
Until all the candidates get down to brass tacks they are asking us to buy a pig in a poke. We have done that before and look where it got us - deeper in debt and doo doo!
Those who wish to lead owe us more and this is why I am still listening and hoping I will get some meat on the bones.
Until I do I will wait for Godot! (See 2 below.)
===
I attended a lecture Thursday evening by a Harvard Professor, Dr. Tobey. He discussed, in a balanced and dispassionate matter, the Iran Deal.. He began by listing four advantages and then listed the disadvantages. He concluded by indicating he did not believe the issue was settled and that we could have gotten a better deal had we applied more pressure.
He thought Iran agreed to the deal because they were seeking the lifting of sanctions, the ability to eventually go nuclear and to conduct increased commerce.
Personally, I see no advantages because it is a faith based agreement with a nation of liars so anything they agreed to is highly suspect because they will disavow all the terms when it suits them. Furthermore, we have proven we will cave and even if we do not China and Russia will run interference for Iran and block any of our challenges.
I do not trust Obama any more than I do the Ayatollh. (See 3 below.)
===
Eventually Americans will be attacked by radical Islamists here and when that happens perhaps they will understand why Israel is unwilling to make any agreement with those who are out to destroy them and why they reject Obama and Kerry's unilateralism garbage. (See 4 an 4a below.)
===
Totally agree. (See 5 below.)
===
Outcome of Netanyahu meeting with Obama:
Now that The Middle East is imploding Obama agreed with Netanyahu that America should begin discussions on Israel's needs going forward for the next ten years. so it can defend itself by itself.
In essence Obama remains willing to provide Israel with larger gloves in order to defend itself while Obama allows our collective enemies to become more capable of increased destruction as Iran expands its assistance to its radical allies.
===
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1)
The Cultural Revolution Comes to America’s Campuses
Today’s undergraduates probably know little, if anything, about the cataclysmic movement in China known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. It began in 1966 before all of them (and even a great number of their professors) were born. This massive national crusade, instigated by Chairman Mao Zedong, was intended to create a pure communist man and woman, devoid of the constraints of materialism and personal ambition.
It started with the closing of the schools and the re-education of intellectuals and the bourgeoisie and ended up with years of incredible violence, taking millions of lives. The actual statistics are still a state secret, but a recent biography of Mao states “at least 3 million people died violent deaths and post-Mao leaders acknowledged that 100 million people, one-ninth of the entire population, suffered in one way or another.”
I got a personal look at the remnants of the Cultural Revolution in 1979 when on an “activist’s” tour of China. The country was still extraordinarily impoverished and primitive. Propagandistic thought control was everywhere, broadcast on loudspeakers and splayed out on ubiquitous billboards urging the masses to “Criticize Lin Biao and Confucius” (Lin Biao was a former ally, then competitor, of Mao’s who died in a mysterious plane crash) or “Smash the Gang of Four,” one of whom was Mao’s wife, then in disrepute. Whenever you asked a question of your interpreters, even a bland one, you got a rote response. Everyone was too timid to say anything the slightest bit controversial. Newspeak reigned. It was like living in Orwell’s 1984 five years early.
So you will excuse me if, from the outset, when I heard how our college campuses were being overtaken with these new-fangled “trigger warnings” and “microagressions,” perfect Maoist terminology for our computerized times, it immediately gave me the heebie-jeebies. Thought control, via political correctness, had come to America in the very spot it had begun in China — the schools.
Recent events at the University of Missouri and Yale (where I attended graduate school), plus now other institutions, have only increased my apprehension. It’s not at the level of the Cultural Revolution — professors haven’t been asked to wear dunce caps yet and no one (to my knowledge) has been killed — but the portents are not reassuring.
Mob rule, not anything close to democracy, is at play. The so-called SJWs (Social Justice Warriors) seem to be functioning as early avatars of the infamous Red Guard, bullying and then threatening violence to anyone whose thoughts run outside what is deemed to be correct.
College professors and administrators quiver in their path. In the case of Mizzou, the president resignedbefore any concrete evidence of racism was made manifest. It still hasn’t been days later. At dear old Yale, it’s even more bizarre because there were no imputations of racism in the first place, only that there might have been or might be. Forget Bull Connor and the KKK, inappropriate Halloween costumes were the new danger. It was all about having a “safe space” so feelings wouldn’t be hurt, as if the world could be perfect and the human species remade for an extraordinarily fragile generation of coddled students.
Some people ridicule these students as “snowflakes” unable to stand up to the slightest discomfiting words or images. But it is far worse than that. These so-called “snowflakes” are the potential shock troops of the aforementioned Red Guard, American style. There is a fine line between the extreme entitlement that demands to be warned before reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses (as happened recently at Columbia) and a kind of narcissistic rage acting out against any presumed enemy in its path. How do you think the CR actually happened in China? Yes, the country was significantly poorer, but the psychological evolution was strikingly similar.
So think twice if you don’t think it could happen here. Who would have thought the president of one of our great public universities would lose his job in part because someone said he saw a swastika written in feces on one of the bathroom walls, which now, suddenly, no one can find and might have been a photograph in the first place, if it ever existed?
As we say in Hollywood, it’s “The Crucible Meets Animal Farm,” the Salem witch trials meets four legs good, two legs bad. But the professors who teach those anti-fascist masterworks aren’t doing anything to defend against it. Lobotomized by political correctness they attempt to be even-handed, in the way many did with Mao and Stalin. The same results await them.
And we citizens sit outside our great universities and watch the conflagration. It’s only just begun.
1a)Why are we paying their rent again? This woman has been waited on hand and foot for almost seven years and she still has to take pot-shots at America for a struggle she barely knows. It will be very nice to one day have people in the White House who don’t feel so apologetic about the country that gave them everything.
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2)--
2)--
Awaiting Ben Carson’s Agenda
He’s inspiring, but White House hopefuls must be something more than Seabiscuit.
Ben Carson after the Nov. 10 GOP debate in Milwaukee. PHOTO: DANIEL DESLOVER/ZUMA PRESS
S
The press corps has spent two weeks obsessing over what Ben Carson has said about his past. It’d be better off plumbing a far more problematic aspect of his campaign: What exactly is he thinking for the future?
Mr. Carson has been a declared presidential candidate for six months. He spent months more contemplating that run. Now we’re barely more than two months from the Iowa caucuses. And the nation is still waiting for any measure of policy detail from the Carson campaign.
The pediatric neurosurgeon captured attention on the strength of a truly impressive and truly compelling biography. And he’s stoked that interest with his pitch for American renewal. Asked on Fox News Sunday recently to what he attributes his polling strength, Mr. Carson talked about the public’s interest in “truth and integrity” and “traditional American values.” His new TV ad features the tagline “heal, inspire, revive.” This is soothing for an American electorate still aching for the hope and change Barack Obamanever delivered.
Opinion Journal Video
Wonder Land Columnist Dan Henninger on why it may take months for GOP voters to settle on a presidential candidate. Photo credit: Getty Images.
Then again, this is a high-stakes presidential race, and Mr. Carson is obliged to be something more than Seabiscuit. Voters don’t like Mr. Obama’s divisive politics, but the core of their complaint is his destructive policy agenda. Any Republican president will face an extraordinary task in cleaning up the mess. Redirecting the country will require a very clear, very methodical plan.
Mr. Carson has more duty than most to outline such a plan—both because he has no voting record, and because his past policy prescriptions are so varied. Many Americans date their first notice of Ben Carson to that prayer breakfast in 2013, when he criticized ObamaCare in front of the president. In fact, the surgeon has spent 15 years writing a string of best-selling books and giving interviews that feature policy ideas.
Just a few past Carson proposals: He has called for government to take responsibility for providing catastrophic health insurance, funded by taxes on insurers. He has called for turning insurers into “nonprofit service organizations with standardized, regulated profit margins.” He’s suggested that he’d be OK with a total tax rate (federal, state, local) of 37%—or 42% for those earning more than $1 million. He’s suggested having government pay for child-care facilities. He has proposed (as recently as January) a “luxury tax on very expensive items, which provides an opportunity for the wealthy to pay down the national debt.”
It’s possible Mr. Carson now holds different views. We don’t really know. He has in recent weeks started to outline some major proposals, but rarely on paper, and often with giant question marks. On Monday he finally put a number to his flat tax—15%—and said he’d eliminate all deductions. He wants to extend that rate to capital gains and foreign income. This is a start.
Then again, Mr. Carson has also said he’d offer a “rebate” for people in poverty. How does that work? And what about a specific corporate tax rate? Carried interest? Expensing? Dividends? Tax harmonization? He has said he’d declare a tax holiday for multinationals with money overseas, but that then he’d require them to invest 10% of what they bring back in “enterprise zones.” How’s that work? And why?
ObamaCare has motivated the Republican electorate for years. Mr. Carson spent a long time suggesting he’d replace government health programs like Medicare with cradle-to-grave health savings accounts—to which the government would contribute. When asked about it recently, Mr. Carson said, “That’s the old plan. That’s been gone for several months now.”
His new HSA plan, though not formally released, would seem to coexist with Medicare and Medicaid, giving recipients the option of reallocating federal dollars to health accounts. And everyone else? Mr. Carson has implied he is against the federal government funding HSAs for workers. At the same time he’s suggested that he’d get rid of the tax benefit for corporations that currently provide health benefits to tens of millions of Americans.
He has changed his mind four times on the minimum wage—criticizing Mr. Obama for proposing a hike, then saying the rate did need to rise, then proposing a two-tiered system tied to inflation, and then (at this week’s debate) opposing any changes (again).
In fairness, there are many issues on which Mr. Carson is consistent and clear: tort reform, the need to cut spending and repeal ObamaCare. In fairness, there are many issues on which he is not.
The point is not to pile on, but to note that these are basic and legitimate questions. Being president, like pediatric neurosurgery, takes great study and work. You don’t wing an operation to separate conjoined twins. And you don’t wing saving a country.
Few doubt that Mr. Carson is incredibly smart and capable, that he has the values and integrity he speaks of. But values and integrity are but a framework for purpose. The nation deserves to know Mr. Carson’s specific purpose.
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3)
3)
Iran threatens to end nuclear deal
Rouhani warns that if US imposes any new non-nuclear sanctions, Iran will 'fail to comply' with obligations of deal; demands US 'apology.'
By Ari Yashar
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani threatened on Thursday to abandon the nuclear deal, if the US imposes any new sanctions unrelated to Tehran's nuclear program.
"The obligations are the following: the group of six will not impose new sanctions, and we should fulfill the agreements. In case the Unites States or other countries fail to comply with their obligations, we will be forced to do the same," Rouhani told the Italian Corriere della Sera paper according to the semi-official Fars News Agency.
Rouhani went on to say Iran is in dispute with the US, given Tehran's demands that all sanctions against it be lifted as part of the nuclear deal. The US maintains that the nuclear deal only has nuclear sanctions lifted but not others - such as those over Iran's rampant human rights abuses, its ballistic missile program and active support of terror as the leading state sponsor of terror.
The ultimatum comes just days after it was revealed Tuesday that Iran has stopped dismantling its centrifuges at the Natanz and Fordow uranium enrichment plants, breaching the nuclear deal that calls for the dismantling.
It also recently bought a plane to deploy troops in Syria in violation of sanctions still in place in the nuclear deal.
The deal has been sharply criticized, both for allowing Iran to inspect its own covert nuclear sites and for having an end date at which time Iran will be able to freely build a nuclear arsenal.
"The US must apologize"
In his comments to the Italian paper on Thursday, Rouhani went on to say ties with America could be repaired - if the US "apologizes."
"If they modify their policies, correct errors committed in these 37 years and apologize to the Iranian people, the situation will change and good things can happen."
In Iran millions regularly hold protests against the US chanting "Death to America," and ironically the nuclear deal was reached just days after Iran's annual "Death to Israel" day when America was similarly demonized and US flags were burned throughout the country.
In light of Rouhani's threats, Republican presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) slammed the administration of US President Barack Obama for ignoring Tehran's rhetoric.
“The Obama administration may insist that the nuclear deal is somehow isolated from other bad behavior on the part of the Islamic Republic, but the fact is that this is all part of the same ugly pattern,” Cruz told the Washington Free Beacon.
“Tehran understands perfectly well that the terrorist activities of the Revolutionary Guard, including the detention last month of American citizen Siamek Namazi and American resident Nizar Zakka, are part of the same anti-American hostility that also fuels their nuclear program.”
“Trying to separate out their activities is a fool’s errand," he concluded. "There can be no good-faith deal with a regime that is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism and that has been targeting America and our allies for 36 years.”
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4)Hamas praises killings; Reports that Red Crescent ambulance failed to provide medical help
Israeli father and son shot dead in West Bank terror attack
Mother and second son injured in shooting south of Hebron, 3 daughters treated for shock; IDF troops hunting for two Palestinian gunmen
An Israeli father and his teenage son were killed Friday afternoon by two Palestinian gunmen who fired on their vehicle south of the West Bank city of Hebron. The mother of the family was lightly injured, and a second son suffered moderate injuries. The family’s three daughters were not hit by the gunfire but were treated for shock.
Just before 3 p.m. on Friday, the Magen David Adom rescue service received a report of gunshots fired at a car near Otniel Junction in the southern West Bank. Paramedics arrived to find two Israelis critically injured. They subsequently pronounced them dead at the scene.
The two were later identified as a man in his 40s and his son of about 18. The murdered father and the son were seated in the front seats of the vehicle; initial reports said the family was on its way to relatives in the southern town of Meitar for Shabbat when the attack happened.
Channel 2 reported that two gunmen opened fire at the vehicle and that one of them then got out and fired more shots from closer to the family’s car. The TV report said the critically injured son managed to telephone emergency services and was then hit by more gunfire.
The TV report said security authorities were also investigating whether the first ambulance on the scene, from the Palestinian Red Crescent, slowed, saw that the victims were Jews, and sped away, failing to provide medical assistance.
The mother and her second son, a 16-year-old boy, were taken to Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba for treatment. The three daughters were being treated at the same hospital for shock.
Security forces entered a number of villages in the area, supported by military helicopters, to where the suspected terrorists could have fled, Channel 2 said. The nearby village of Yatta was also placed under closure.
Noam Bar, a senior Magen David Adom paramedic who was one of the first to reach the victims, said: “When we arrived at the scene we saw seven passengers outside the vehicle, two of them — a man of about 40 and a youth of about 18 — lying unconscious with bullet wounds to the upper body. They displayed no signs of life and we were forced to pronounce them dead at the scene.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed his condolences following the attack, and vowed that Israel would hunt down those responsible for the killings.
“We will get to these heinous murderers and we will bring them to justice as we have done in the past,” the prime minister said, warning that Israel would continue to fight terror wherever necessary.
Members of Har Hevron Regional Council called on the government to use every means at its disposal in order to halt the wave of terror, Channel 2 said. They also accused the Palestinian Red Crescent rescue service of failing to help the dead and wounded.
MK Avigdor Liberman, the hawkish head of the opposition Yisrael Beytenu party, said the attack was due to failed government policy of containment, Channel 2 reported.
The Walla website said that Hamas, which has a minor foothold in the West Bank but has been agitating for an increase in attacks on Israelis by West Bank Palestinians, welcomed the attack as a “quality development in the intifada.”
Hamas media outlets stressed Friday that the terrorists “spared” the lives of the children in the car, on the grounds that it violates their faith. The group made a similar claim after a Hamas terror cell shot dead Eitam and Naama Henkin in front of their children in an attack in the West Bank last month.
The attack brings to 15 the number of Israelis killed in the current cycle of Palestinian terror and violence, which flared up during the Jewish New Year holiday in September. Hundreds of Israelis have also been wounded in the car-ramming, shooting and knife attacks that have struck primarily in Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Dozens of Palestinians have also been killed or injured, the vast majority while carrying out attacks or attempted attacks or in clashes with Israeli security forces.
Raphael Ahren contributed to this report
