This from a dear friend and fellow memo reader. (See 1 and 1a below.)
My response: "What took you so long to get it? "
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Carson is a great surgeon but can he survive the cuts from the media and press who resent the fact that he is a successful, conservative and black? Being black, conservative and successful does not square with their play book message that blacks are dependent supplicants and need handouts and special 'affirmative action' favors from progressives and liberal programs which provide them with greater power and influence in doling out tax dollars and enlarging the crippling role of government's destruction of personal freedoms..
The Carson's, Powell's, Condi Rice's and Sowell's of this world, and others of like accomplishments, are threats to the progressive and liberal message that black citizens cannot stand on their own two feet without a financial crutch from White Uncle Sam. This message, as I have written before, is demeaning, but it provides the basis for those who claim to be more sensitive to black needs because of years of oppression which continue to this day. In essence, their message provides a platform to paint conservatives as heartless and liberals and progressives as compassionate because they have dollars to dispense. Yet, when one looks at facts and the trillions spent to justify The War on Poverty and Obama's economic results, we see most blacks are worse off than ever.
Part of the reason is because liberal unions have under-served their education needs. Another is that black families have been torn apart because black fathers cannot compete against Uncle Sam's benefits and desert their families. Add to this the fact that blacks are used as pawn voting blocks. The progressive and liberal negative attitude towards religion has also helped to render the black connection with their churches and religion. All of this was brilliantly predicted by Sen. Moynihan over 50 years ago and he was vilified by the same liberal and progressive intellectual crowd at the time he wrote his treatise.
One day black voters might awake, see the light and realize they have been used and abused by those who profess they 'feel their pain' when in fact they and their counterproductive programs are the very ones who have caused much of that pain. It is akin to the statement: "I am from the government and I am here to help you."
While I am on my soap box, one further observation. White fight allowed blacks politicians to take over and run many of our nation's largest cities. We have black administration in my own city of Savannah. There is a significant correlation between black plight in these cities because black administrators has proven unequal to the challenge. It seems the attitude and conduct of so many black politicians is 'it is now their time at the trough.' ( This is not to suggest white politicians are void of corruptible activity. in fact, one can argue they set the tone and the example in many cases for black's to emulate.)
That said the problem of black integration remains a very serious and explosive problem. (See 2 below.)
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Obama met with Netanyahu today. It is ironic that Israel and Netanyahu offer Obama a life jacket if Obama is able to appreciate this fact. Israel remains the one stable and reliable ally in the region yet, Obama has been working overtime to bring about circumstances which creates more instability, threaten's Israel's very survival and has allowed Russia to displace America.
Time will tell which road Obama chooses to take and whether he is 'mensch' enough to man up or will he continue his petulance and arrogance?
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Is this the candidate voters will select. If so even God will refuse to Bless Us. (See 3 below.)
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How do you explain this other than pure scare politics. (See 4 below.)
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I love this song but never understood it. This was sent by a dear friend and fellow memo reader:
Is this the candidate voters will select. If so even God will refuse to Bless Us. (See 3 below.)
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How do you explain this other than pure scare politics. (See 4 below.)
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I love this song but never understood it. This was sent by a dear friend and fellow memo reader:
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Dick
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1) A briefing document on Syria…...
President Assad (who is bad) is a nasty guy who got so nasty his people rebelled and the Rebels (who are good) started winning.
But then some of the rebels turned a bit nasty and are now called Islamic State (who are definitely bad) and some continued to support democracy (who are still good).
So the Americans (who are good) started bombing Islamic State (who are bad) and giving arms to the Syrian Rebels (who are good) so they could fight Assad (who is still bad) which was good.
By the way, there is a breakaway state in the north run by the Kurds who want to fight IS (which is a good thing) but the Turkish authorities think they are bad, so we have to say they are bad whilst secretly thinking they're good and giving them guns to fight IS (which is good) but that is another matter.
Getting back to Syria. President Putin (bad, as he invaded Crimea and the Ukraine and killed lots of folks including that nice Russian man in London with polonium) has decided to back Assad (who is still bad) by attacking IS (who are also bad) which is sort of a good thing?
But Putin (still bad) thinks the Syrian Rebels (who are good) are also bad, and so he bombs them too, much to the annoyance of the Americans (who are good) who are busy backing and arming the rebels (who are also good).
Now Iran (who used to be bad, but now they have agreed not to build any nuclear weapons and bomb Israel are now good) are going to provide ground troops to support Assad (still bad) as are the Russians (bad) who now have ground troops and aircraft in Syria.So a Coalition of Assad (still bad) Putin (extra bad) and the Iranians (good, but in a bad sort of way) are going to attack IS (who are bad) which is a good thing, but also the Syrian Rebels (who are good) which is bad.
Now the British (obviously good, except Corbyn who is probably bad) and the Americans (also good) cannot attack Assad (still bad) for fear of upsetting Putin (bad) and Iran (good / bad) and now they have to accept that Assad might not be that bad after all compared to IS (who are super bad).
So Assad (bad) is now probably good, being better than IS (no real choice there) and since Putin and Iran are also fighting IS that may now make them good. America (still good) will find it hard to arm a group of rebels being attacked by the Russians for fear of upsetting Mr Putin (now good) and that mad ayatollah in Iran (also good) and so they may be forced to say that the Rebels are now bad, or at the very least abandon them to their fate. This will lead most of them to flee to Turkey and on to Europe or join IS (still the only constantly bad group).
To Sunni Muslims, an attack by Shia Muslims (Assad and Iran) backed by Russians will be seen as something of a Holy War, and the ranks of IS will now be seen by the Sunnis as the only Jihadis fighting in the Holy War and hence many Muslims will now see IS as good (doh!).
Sunni Muslims will also see the lack of action by Britain and America in support of their Sunni rebel brothers as something of a betrayal (might have a point) and hence we will be seen as bad.
So now we have America (now bad) and Britain (also bad) providing limited support to Sunni Rebels (bad) many of whom are looking to IS (good / bad) for support against Assad (now good) who, along with Iran (also good) and Putin (also, now, unbelievably, good ) are attempting to retake the country Assad used to run before all this started?
I hope that this clears it all up for you.1a)Our Desire for Peace Mustn’t Blind Us to the Arab Turmoil
The carnage in Syria, the appearance of Al-Qaida and the Islamic State, and Iran’s pledge for Israel’s destruction have effectively killed the prospects for widening the circle of peace.
By Moshe Arens
“Shall the sword devour forever?” the prime minister was asked at a recent session of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. This verse from the Second Book of Samuel has become a modern metaphor for a war without an end.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s answer was straightforward and unequivocal – “yes.” Many were abashed by his response. Is that the future he’s holding out for us? Where is the peace we’re all seeking?As a matter of fact, the history of the Zionist enterprise in the Land of Israel has been accompanied by a continuous strand of efforts to reach an accommodation with the Arab world and the Palestinian population living here. Just look at Theodor Herzl’s book “Altneuland” envisioning the future Jewish state where Jews and Arabs live together in peace.
In retrospect, it was no more than wishful thinking. The agreement between Chaim Weizmann and Emir Faisal of January 1919 pledging cooperation between the Zionists and the Arabs lasted no more than a few months. Brit Shalom, whose members were prepared to renounce the aim of establishing a Jewish state, got nowhere with the Arabs and went down in history as a small group of well-meaning dreamers.
Then followed the Zionists’ consent to the Peel Commission decision in 1937 to partition the land between Jews and Arabs, only to be turned down by the Arabs. And there was a repetition 10 years later when the UN General Assembly passed a resolution dividing the land between Jews and Arabs, only to be again accepted by the Zionists and rejected by the Arabs.
This was followed by four Arab wars of aggression against Israel – in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973. Ze’ev Jabotinsky was a lonely voice back in 1923 when he warned that the Arabs should not be expected to welcome the Zionist enterprise with open arms. He called for the building of an “iron wall” that could not be breached in order to disabuse the Arabs of the idea that they could throw the Jews into the sea.
As he predicted, it took the proof of Israel’s military prowess, as demonstrated in the Yom Kippur War, to bring an Arab country – Egypt – to the peace table with Israel. The Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty of 1979 was followed 15 years later by the peace treaty with Jordan.
That’s where things stand today. Repeated attempts to arrive at a peace treaty with Syria were not successful, and few regret this now. The Oslo Accords with the PLO did not lead to a peace treaty with the Palestinians when Yasser Arafat rejected the Israeli offer tendered by Ehud Barak at Camp David in 2000.
But there was a period of over 30 years, after the Yom Kippur War, when “peace was in the air.” That period is gone, at least for the time being. The Arab Spring ended it.
The turmoil in the Arab world, the carnage in Syria, the appearance of Al-Qaida and the Islamic State, and the increasing dominance of Iran sworn to Israel’s destruction have effectively killed the prospects for widening the circle of peace.
The idea that despite all this Israel can reach peace with the Palestinians by negotiating with Mahmoud Abbas, who has nothing like the authority among the Palestinians that Arafat had in his day, seems nothing more than a fantasy. Abbas is challenged by Hamas and is an easy takeover target for the Islamic State.
At the moment peace seems very far away, and Israel needs to be prepared for all eventualities. This is basically what Netanyahu said at the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. The current Middle Eastern situation will not last forever, but it does not seem it will stabilize in the foreseeable future.
3)
Is this not clear to every observer of the Middle East? Can our desire for peace blind us to the reality around us? A verse from the Book of Jeremiah is applicable to those inspired by their desire for peace, people who refuse to recognize the unsavory reality around us: “They have eyes and see not.”-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2) The Carson CruciblePolicy is a bigger challenge for the doctor than his biography.
Ben Carson has risen in the Republican presidential polls in part on his inspiring biography, so it’s no surprise that his opponents and the press corps are looking for ways to blot the ledger. How the retired pediatric neurosurgeon handles this onslaught may decide whether he remains a serious contender.This kind of scrutiny is inevitable, as Mr. Carson has to appreciate. No Republican candidate is going to get to the White House without a severe media hazing. Mr. Carson is right that Barack Obama got a relative pass in 2008, but this double standard is a reality every Republican candidate has to manage. Mr. Carson can expect harassment from the left in particular because he is a black conservative. Progressives have prospered by dividing the electorate by race and gender, and so they can’t tolerate a black conservative as a successful political role model.The retired doctor also has the handicap of never before having run for office, so he has been vetted less than career politicians like Marco Rubio or Chris Christie. Because his main appeal is biography rather than policy, opponents will naturally try to attack that strength.But Republicans want to nominate the strongest possible candidate, and better for bad news to come out now rather than at the hands of the Hillary Clinton-Sid Blumenthal attack machine. George W. Bush sat on his DUI conviction in 2000, the news came out only days before the election, and it almost cost him the White House.A pair of stories last week challenged details in Mr. Carson’s 1996 memoir, “Gifted Hands,” that he has also used on the campaign trail. CNN says it talked to nine people who knew Mr. Carson as a young man who said they couldn’t corroborate his stories of violent outbursts. But that hardly proves they didn’t happen. Mr. Carson says they did happen and one involved a close family member who wants to remain anonymous.A story in Politico then questioned his claim that he had been offered a “full scholarship” to West Point. But Politico marred its minor scoop by asserting at first that Mr. Carson had claimed to have applied and been accepted to West Point, which Mr. Carson’s memoir does not claim. The U.S. Military Academy doesn’t offer scholarships like other schools in any case, because everyone admitted pays for the education with military service, not tuition.Politico also reported that Mr. Carson admitted that he “fabricated” the scholarship offer, but that is tendentious. Mr. Carson admits he was told at a dinner with military officials that a student with his record in high school and ROTC would have had no trouble getting into West Point. Mr. Carson now concedes that he could have been more precise in how he has rendered the story.Our view is that voters will decide what is or isn’t a voting issue, and conservatives shouldn’t play the Clinton game of claiming that challenges to credibility are out of bounds. But the CNN and Politico stories don’t strike us as all that damaging, much less disqualifying, and neither one undermines the truth of Mr. Carson’s rise from poverty to the pinnacle of the medical profession. Compared with Mr. Carson, President Obama grew up in relative privilege.Assuming there are no bombshells in Mr. Carson’s past, his best strategy to counter doubts about his candidacy is to show more mastery of policy issues than he has so far. Mr. Carson’s talk about Medicare has in particular been politically careless.It’s fine to talk up medical-savings accounts as a long-term health-care reform. But only a rookie candidate would suggest such accounts could replace Medicare without first noting that this won’t affect current retirees or near-retirees, and would be phased in over decades. If Mr. Carson is the nominee, Democrats will make it sound as if he wants to throw grandma off the bus.Mr. Carson says voters want someone who isn’t a professional politician, and the polls show that GOP voters are entertaining the idea. But as the primaries arrive, voters will be looking for political and policy competence as much as personal character. They want someone who can beat Hillary Clinton and who they can imagine in the Oval Office. Passing that test is Mr. Carson’s biggest challenge as he seeks the nomination.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Mistress of Deception
The self-inflicted wounds of Hillary Rodham Clinton just keep manifesting themselves. She has two serious issues that have arisen in the past week; one is political and the other is legal. Both have deception at their root.
Her political problem is one of credibility. We know from her emails that she informed her daughter Chelsea and the then-prime minister of Egypt within 12 hours of the murder of the U.S. ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, that he had been killed in Benghazi by al-Qaida. We know from the public record that the Obama administration’s narrative blamed the killings of the ambassador and his guards on an anonymous crowd’s spontaneous reaction to an anti-Muhammad video.
Over this past weekend we learned that her own embassy staff in Tripoli told her senior staff in Washington the day after the killings that the video was not an issue, and very few Libyans had seen it. We also know from her emails that the CIA informed her within 24 hours of the ambassador’s murder that it had been planned by al-Qaida 12 days before the actual killings.
Nevertheless, she persisted in blaming the video. When she received the bodies of Ambassador Stevens and his three bodyguards at Andrews Air Force base three days after their murders, she told the media and the families of the deceased assembled there that the four Americans had been killed by a spontaneous mob reacting to a cheap 15-minute anti-Muhammad video.
Clinton’s sordid behavior throughout this unhappy affair reveals a cavalier attitude about the truth and a ready willingness to deceive the public for short-term political gain. This might not harm her political aspirations with her base in the Democratic Party; but it will be a serious political problem for her with independent voters, without whose support she simply cannot be elected.
Yet, her name might not appear on any ballot in 2016.
That’s because, each time she addresses these issues — her involvement in Benghazi and her emails — her legal problems get worse. We already know that the FBI has been investigating her for espionage (the failure to secure state secrets), destruction of government property and obstruction of justice (wiping her computer server clean of governmental emails that were and are the property of the federal government), and perjury (lying to a federal judge about whether she returned all governmental emails to the State Department).
Now, she has added new potential perjury and misleading Congress issues because of her deceptive testimony to the House Benghazi committee. In 2011, when President Obama persuaded NATO to enact and enforce a no-fly zone over Libya, he sent American intelligence agents on the ground. Since they were not military and were not shooting at Libyan government forces, he could plausibly argue that he had not put “boots” on the ground. Clinton, however, decided that she could accelerate the departure of the Libyan strongman, Col. Moammar Gadhafi, by arming some of the Libyan rebel groups that were attempting to oppose him and thus helping them to shoot at government forces.
So, in violation of federal law and the U.N. arms embargo on Libya she authorized the shipment of American arms to Qatar, knowing they’d be passed off to Libyan rebels, some of whom were al-Qaida, a few of whom killed Ambassador Stevens using American-made weapons. When asked about this, she said she knew nothing of it. The emails underlying this are in the public domain. Clinton not only knew of the arms-to-Libyan-rebels deal, she authored and authorized it. She lied about this under oath.
After surveying the damage done to his regime and his family by NATO bombings, Col. Kaddafi made known his wish to negotiate a peaceful departure from Libya. When his wish was presented to Clinton, a source in the room with Clinton has revealed that she silently made the “off with his head” hand motion by moving her hand quickly across her neck. She could do that because she knew the rebels were well equipped with American arms with which to kill him. She didn’t care that many of the rebels were al-Qaida or that arming them was a felony. She lied about this under oath.
My Fox News colleagues Catherine Herridge and Pamela Browne have scrutinized Clinton’s testimony with respect to her friend and adviser Sidney Blumenthal. Recall that President Obama vetoed Clinton’s wish to hire him as her State Department senior adviser. So she had the Clinton Foundation pay him a greater salary than the State Department would have, and he became her silent de facto advisor.
They emailed each other hundreds of times during her tenure. He provided intelligence to her, which he obtained from a security company on the ground in Libya in which he had a financial interest. He advised her on how to present herself to the media. He even advocated the parameters of the Libyan no-fly zone and she acted upon his recommendations. Yet she told the committee he was “just a friend.” She was highly deceptive and criminally misleading about this under oath.
It is difficult to believe that the federal prosecutors and FBI agents investigating Clinton will not recommend that she be indicted. Inexplicably, she seems to have forgotten that they were monitoring what she said under oath to the Benghazi committee. By lying under oath, and by misleading Congress, she gave that team additional areas to investigate and on which to recommend indictments.
When those recommendations are made known, no ballot will bear her name.
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4)U.S. Has Built 10 Keystones Since 2010
4)U.S. Has Built 10 Keystones Since 2010
By Editors
While environmentalists and TransCanada continue to battle over construction of the Keystone Pipeline, American pipeline companies have constructed the equivalent of 10 Keystone Pipelines over the last decade. The red lines show pipelines that already existed in 2005. The blue lines show pipelines that have been constructed since then. The new pipelines carry oil from Alberta to Chicago, Michigan and St. Louis. There is even a pipeline running to Cushing, Oklahoma and from there on to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico. These lines just do not have the capacity of Keystone. The U.S. has built 12,000 miles of new pipeline since 2010. This is compared to the 875-mile sector of Keystone that is still under dispute. The State Department has reviewed the project five times, giving it a positive review, but President Obama is expected to reject it once more before leaving office in 2017.
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