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Don't f--- with New York according to Lewis Black and his black humor:
http://www.wor710.com/onair/
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Obama's political war with Israel. (See 1 below.)
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Next year's (2017) SIRC, President's Day Dinner speaker will be Elliot Abrams.
This is a recent article he published (See 2 below.)
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John Myers believes America is suffering from Obamaitis and Obama from seven deadly sins. He further believes: Obama is both a Muslim and silently proud of his religion.
You decide. (See 3 below.)
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This from a dear friend and fellow memo reader:
"WE ARE A CAPITALISTIC DEMOCRACY THAT PROVIDES A FREE EDUCATION FOR ITS CITIZENS (AT LEAST FOR THOSE THAT WANT IT, THEREBY EXPECTING SOME LEVEL OF INFORMED DECISION- MAKING IN EXPRESSING THEIR VIEWS AND IN VOTING.)
BUT, WHEN MOST OF THE POPULATION IS WORKING CLASS, MIDDLE CLASS AND LESS THAN THE UPPER CLASS, IT MUST BE EXPECTED THAT THEY WILL LOOK TO THE GOVERNMENT FOR SUPPORT PROGRAMS. IT IS BASIC PSYCHOLOGY TO WANT SOMETHING FOR NOTHING IF YOU CAN GET IT.
THAT IS WHY THE UPPER CLASSES , FOR THE MOST PART, ARE REPUBLICAN a/k/a G.O.P.---- THE GOVERNMENT OPPOSITION PARTY vs THE DEMOCRATS. .
WHEN THE GOP STARTS TO SHOW GOVERNMENT SUPPORT FOR THOSE IN NEED , OR TO MAKE LIFE EASIER, LESS STRESSFUL, IT WILL CONTROL THE WHITE HOUSE AND CONGRESS.
THIS MAY APPEAR TO BE SIMPLISTIC, BUT CONSIDER THE HUMAN CONDITION AND THE NEED TO SURVIVE."
I e mailed my friend that if the GOP can only capture the Presidency by becoming Democrats then what's the distinction other than the two parties will enter a contest about which party does the most. We are almost there because Republicans have become "Bud Lite."
As long as politicians seek re-election they will need money to finance their campaigns and that means they will become beholden to contributors and will do their bidding to the detriment of the nation. As Ben Franklin allegedly said: "We have a Republic if we can keep it."
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Hillary apparently is now caught in the kind of lie that should disqualify her as president. Her careless and knowing disregard of state secrets and her signed commitment not to do so, if proven true, should prove devastating for anyone who gives a damn about how officials play foot loose with top secret material. (See 4 below.)
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Dick====================================================================
1) Column one: The Obama administration's most covert war
1) Over the past several weeks, we have learned that the Obama administration believes it is at war with Israel. The war is not a shooting war, but a political war. Its goal is to bring the government to its knees to the point where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu loses power or begs Obama and his advisers to shepherd Israel through a “peace process” in which Israel will renounce its rights to Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.
One component of this war is espionage. Last month The Wall Street Journal reported that Israel is a top target for American espionage.
The other component of the administration’s war against Israel is political subversion. Over the past week, the administration has campaigned against the NGO bill sponsored by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked. If the bill, which was approved by the government, becomes law, it will require political NGO's ,that are principally financed by foreign governments, to identify as foreign agents in their official communications and interactions.
Last week, State Department spokesman James Kirby lambasted the bill at an official briefing. Among other things, Kirby rejected Shaked’s claim that her bill is less restrictive than the US’s own Foreign Agents Registration Act. Kirby offered no substantiation of his claim.
Earlier this week, US Ambassador Dan Shapiro met with Shaked. Following their meeting, the US Embassy published two statements attacking the NGO law. In one of them, the embassy sought to substantiate Kirby’s claim regarding FARA. By the embassy’s telling, FARA relates only to agents whose action are directly guided by foreign governments, while Shaked’s NGO bill relates to entities that receive financing from foreign governments whether or not their actions are directed by the government financiers.
The embassy’s claim is deeply misleading.
As attorney Lorri Lowenthal Marcus explained this week in The Jewish Press, in practice, the burden of proof that US entities are not directed by foreign governments that fund them falls on the entities, not on the U.S government. In her words, the U.S law “uses ambiguous words and tests which are far more likely to lead to over-broad applications and chilling of speech than does the straightforward Israeli proposal’s standard.”
Moreover, whereas Shaked’s proposed NGO law would fine entities that fail to abide by reporting restrictions, under FARA, US entities that fail to abide by the restrictions of the law can face both fines and up to five years in prison.
The duplicitous nature of the administration’s assault on Shaked’s bill is all the more obvious when we consider how senior US officials view these politicized organizations.
Currently, the State Department is slowly fulfilling a federal court order to publish the emails Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton sent from her private email server during her tenure as secretary of state. Over the past several weeks, the department has published a number of emails regarding Israel that reveal the depth of hostility Clinton’s closest advisers harbored toward Israel.
Last week, one such email demonstrated that Clinton’s senior anti-Israel advisers viewed radical Israeli-registered NGOs as agents for the administration to use in order to carry out covert anti-Israel policies.
The email in question is a letter Clinton received in December 2011 from retired ambassador Thomas Pickering. Clinton asked her chief of staff to print out his letter.
Pickering’s illustrious career reached its peak during Bill Clinton’s administration. Clinton’s husband appointed Pickering, a former ambassador to Israel, to serve as undersecretary of state for policy planning, the third-most senior position at the State Department.
Pickering retired in 2001, at the end of the Clinton years. Since retiring, he has enjoyed the status of elder statesman among the American foreign policy elite. He has also been a loyal supporter and lobbyist for Iran, and a signatory on numerous plans to stick it to Israel.
In his letter to Clinton, Pickering recommended using leftist NGOs – including Peace Now, which he mentioned by name – to destabilize the political situation on the ground in Israel.
Pickering set out a plan, which in his view would force Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to ask the Americans to initiate a new diplomatic process with the Palestinians.
Pickering’s plan involved organizing a protest movement of Palestinian and Israeli women to “bring continuing pressure to change minds at the top.”
On the Palestinian side, Pickering said, “there might be peaceful demonstrations against all aspects of the occupation on the Palestinian sides – roadblocks, land confiscations, new settlement activity, around military government installations and perhaps in Area C, which they do not control.”
These actions Pickering wrote, “could create the kind of action which no army can easily use force to deal with…. With all and only women demonstrating peacefully under the eyes of the world, the chances are much less force will be used against them, since that action has its own consequences.”
In other words, Pickering sought to organize provocations of IDF units “under the eyes of the world,” in which IDF soldiers would be portrayed as being mean to Palestinian women. These women for their part would provoke them to be mean by interfering with military operations or disrupting the lives of Israeli citizens in Judea and Samaria.
Pickering made no bones about the covert nature of this US anti-Israel subversion. He warned Clinton, “Most of all the United States, in my view, cannot be seen to have stimulated encouraged or be the power behind it for reasons you will understand better than anyone.
“I believe third parties and a number of NGOs on both sides would help.”
That is, Clinton’s confidante, the elder statesman who organized a lobby on behalf of Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, called for the secretary of state to use radical Israeli NGOs as US agents to carry out a covert US operation against an allied government.
A notable aspect of Pickering’s plan is his underlying assumption that the US-organized demonstrations would be filmed and used against Israel in the court of public opinion.
For the past several years, the US government has funded B’Tselem’s video project.
According to NGO Monitor, in 2014 the US paid some $68,000 for the project which provides video cameras and photographic training to Palestinians. The goal is for them to film IDF soldiers and Israeli civilians in fraught situations and call their morality and legitimacy into question.
It was his recognition that cameras are the new weapon of Israel’s enemies that caused Gilad Ach, a 32-year-old master’s student at Tel Aviv University, to form his own NGO – Ad Kan. Ad Kan’s goal is to penetrate radical Israeli NGOs to expose their problematic activities.
In a bit of bad timing for the administration, last Thursday, the same day Kirby launched the administration’s public assault against Shaked’s NGO bill, and just before Pickering’s email to Clinton was published, Uvda, Channel 2’s investigative news magazine, broadcast a report revealing some of the findings that Ach and his colleagues have uncovered in Ad Kan’s three-year operation.
Over the past three years, Ad Kan employees have seeded themselves inside radical Israeli NGOs and surreptitiously filmed their operations.
The footage broadcast last week on Uvda showed senior “human rights” operatives for B’Tselem and Ta’ayush, Nasser Nawajah and Ezra Nawi, plotting to bring about the arrest, torture and murder of a Palestinian by the Palestinian Authority’s US-trained and -funded security services.
The Palestinian in question was, as far as they were concerned, marked for torture and murder because he was hoping to sell his land to Jews in the South Hebron Hills around the Israeli community of Sussiya.
One of the strangest aspects of the Uvda report was the radical Left’s response to it. By and large, leftist groups refused to condemn what Nawi and Nawajah were doing. B’Tselem, which is supposed to fight for Palestinian human rights, said that it is legitimate to turn Palestinians who wish to sell their property to Jews over to the PA, despite the fact that the PA’s penalty for such actions is death.
Beyond what their refusal to condemn solicitation of murder and torture says about their commitment to Palestinian human rights, the radical Left’s silence reveals just how key Nawi and Nawajah are to their operations.
In a word, Nawajah and Nawi are superstars of the radical Left in Israel and throughout the Western world. Last July, Nawajeh published an op-ed in The New York Times. In it, he accused Israel of denying the property rights of Palestinians in the exact area where he and Nawi plotted the murder of a Palestinian who sought to exercise his property rights by selling his land to Israelis.
As Liel Liebowitz reported in the Tablet online magazine, in 2007, after Nawi was arrested at a violent protest against the IDF, 20,000 people, including the who’s who of the radical Left in Israel and in the US, signed a petition demanding his immediate release.
Leading members of the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment movement in the US, including Jewish Voices for Peace, have financed Nawi’s activities.
Pickering recommended using NGOs to organize protests. Ad Kan exposed how this is done.
On Monday, Channel 2 broadcast Ad Kan surveillance footage showing a Breaking the Silence employee paying Nawi and his Ta’ayush colleague Guy Botavia for organizing a demonstration against IDF soldiers. Botavia serves as the head of Ta’ayush’s video project.
In the same report, Ta’ayush activists are filmed paying Palestinians in cash for participating in the demonstration, in which they threw rocks at IDF soldiers.
In a conversation this week with The Jerusalem Post, Ach claimed that without the NGOs, the Palestinians would not be demonstrating. “I asked one of the Palestinians if he would be rioting if the NGO wasn’t paying him. He said no.
“I asked him what he does when he isn’t rioting.
He said he’s a construction worker in Modi’in Illit, [an Israeli settlement beyond the 1949 armistice lines]. That is, five days a week, Israelis pay him to build settlements, and the rest of the week, other Israelis pay him to throw rocks on soldiers.
“This guy only works for Israelis – either to build or destroy,” Ach wryly noted.
One of the common claims the far Left has made in response to the Uvda report is that if the report is all Ad Kan managed to learn in three years of planting moles in these groups, then clearly there is nothing to expose.
But Ach explains, what Ad Kan has revealed to date is merely the tip of the iceberg.
And so, as the Obama administration ratchets up its political war against Israel in its final year in office, we can expect to learn that like the administration itself, the NGOs the administration is so concerned about protecting have and will stop at nothing to achieve their goal of demonizing Israel and destroying its good name in the Western world.
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2)
Our New Ally Iran
This photo tells us a great deal about American foreign policy today.
Human Rights Watch, not known as a right-wing group, has noted that it appears to violate international agreements prohibiting the use of photos or videos of military detainees for propaganda purposes. Moreover, the entry into Iranian waters (if that happened) by a boat that had lost its engines is obviously “innocent passage” under international law.
Nevertheless, Secretary of State Kerry offered effusive praise of Iran.
The new relationship with Iran is at the top of his agenda. The old-think concept of “allies” is out. Consider this from the AP:
Since the beginning of the year, Kerry and Zarif have spoken by phone at least 11 times, according to the State Department. They’ve focused on nuclear matters, Iran’s worsening rivalry with Saudi Arabia and peace efforts in Syria.
By contrast, America’s top diplomat has talked to Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir only twice. He has consulted once each with Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Jordan’s King Abdullah and the foreign ministers of Britain, Egypt, France, Germany, Russia and the European Union
Once upon a time, during the Clinton administration, the foreign visitor who was invited to the White House most often–13 times–was not Tony Blair or some other ally; it was Yasser Arafat. We know what Clinton got for all that courting: nothing, and the failure of his Camp David peace efforts.
Such treatment of enemies, by Clinton then or Kerry and Obama now, and such treatment of allies never ends well. When the United States appears unable to differentiate between enemies and allies, it gets fewer allies and its enemies grow stronger. Iran is an enemy of the United States, which has killed hundreds of Americans in terrorist attacks over the decades since 1979 and most recently in Iraq.
Throughout the Middle East and no doubt more widely, this photo is half of a moment that will deeply unsettle America’s friends. The other half is the Obama administration’s reaction to this humiliation: to welcome it and thank Iran for it. America’s friends are without doubt thinking “If this is how the Americans react to their own humiliation through an aggressive act, how will they react when we are in danger?”
There’s an old proverb that goes something like this: There are some people so foolish that when you spit in their face they think it’s raining. In the Persian Gulf today, it isn’t raining. Iran just spit in our face, and humiliated the United States; there is no other interpretation of the photo above. If the United States Government cannot even realize what happened, our own interests and those of our allies will be further compromised by Iran in the year ahead.
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3) Obama's Seven Deadly Sins
By John Myers
There are two kinds of pride, both good and bad. “Good pride” represents our dignity and self-respect. “Bad pride” is the deadly sin of superiority that reeks of conceit and arrogance. — John C. Maxwell, American author
========================================================================Last night, President Barack Obama gave his final State of the Union address. I don’t doubt that with it he infected even more Americans with what I call the seven-year itch.Originally, the seven-year itch was a medical diagnosis of a persistent skin irritation. After medical science provided another name, the seven-year itch was a title for a play and then a movie in 1955.So ingrained was the notion of the seven-year itch that psychologists were using it in the diagnosis of marriages on the rocks. I believe that the title applies to a broad and worsening national sickness and can be broken down to one word: Obamaitis.The word “Obamaitis” is new to the lexicon and has myriad definitions, according to Urban Dictionary. It can be defined as believing the president even when you know that he is lying or having the urge to kill yourself every time you hear Obama’s name mentioned.For our purposes, let us confine our definition of Obamaitis to a nationwide ailment whose onset began seven years ago when Obama was elected to his first term.Below, I’ve taken the liberty to aptly name the cause of Obamaitis: Obama’s seven deadly sins.The good news is that in one more year Obamaitis, like food poisoning, will have run its course. The bad news is that symptoms are getting worse by the month and will persist until this malady runs its course and quietly expires. Seven conspicuous symptoms encapsulate Obamaitis — a condition that, if untreated, can have grave repercussions for the nation and may over time destroy America, which once was the envy of the world.Pride
The inhumanity and grand ambitions of radical Islam, which is spreading like a cancer across the Middle East, would be difficult for a proud Muslim to accept. If, as I believe, Obama is both a Muslim and silently proud of his religion, it could be why he seems so willfully blind to its evils and explains why he has been so harsh in dealing with Israel and overly accommodative toward Iran, specifically the making available of $100 billion to Tehran that can be used toward Iran’s ultimate goal of becoming a nuclear threat and the dominant power in the oil-rich Middle East. Being a sympathizer to Islam has weakened America. His halfhearted prosecution of the global war against Islamic fundamentalists reveals his wrath.Wrath
It was reported late last August that Obama stormed out of a Pentagon meeting regarding a proposed bombing campaign against ISIS. According to Before It Is News, Obama was overtaken by a fit of rage and yelled at his top military leaders: “Don’t you dare try and paint all of Islam with the same brush.”There have been other reports on how Obama’s angry outbursts belie the calm demeanor he presents to the public. In his book, “Believer: My Forty Years in Politics,” former Obama strategist David Axelrod reveals how the president once viciously chewed him out as he was preparing Obama for his 2012 debate with Republican nominee Mitt Romney.“Motherf****r’s never happy,” Obama yelled at Axelrod before bolting from the room.It is noteworthy that between taking office in 2009 and March 2015, the Obama administration has waged an all-out war on government whistleblowers and official leakers. According to The Guardian, during that span, his administration undertook eight prosecutions under the 1917 Espionage Act — more than double those under all previous presidents combined.Obama’s public persona as a calm and collected world leader hides another weakness.Lust
Obama’s lust for accolades is well documented from his burning, but thwarted, desire to have his picture taken with the dying iconic leader of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, to his and his wife Michelle’s near brawl with the Clintons over which couple would lay the wreath at the tomb of slain President John F. Kennedy in November 2013.The Obamas’ lust for money and expensive vacations would be legendary, except much of their extravagant spending is typically not reported. Money Morning reported in June 2013 that Obama’s vacation spending far exceeds that of any past president. Just one of the Obama family’s vacations cost taxpayers $100 million. It required a hospital ship stationed near their resort in case anyone needed medical attention, 14 limousines, aircraft and an additional 56 support vehicles. Obama’s desire for things that only money can buy underscores another ugly trait.Gluttony
In September 2012, the Mail Online reported that the Obama family costs taxpayers $1.4 billion per year, some 20 times more than is spent on the British royal family. The perks of being Barack Obama include having a handler for the family dogs. The position costs taxpayers more than $100,000 a year, and the handler is one of 226 Obama staff members paid more than $100,000 per year.The numbers are compiled by author Robert Keith Gray in his book “Presidential Perks Gone Royal.” Gray states Obama isn’t the only president to have taken advantage of the expensive trappings of his office. But the amount of money spent on the first family, he argues, has risen tremendously under the Obama administration and needs to be reined in. According to Gray, the $1.4 billion spent on Obama in 2011 alone factor the cost of the “biggest staff in history at the highest wages ever,” a 50 percent increase in the numbers of appointed czars and an Air Force One “running with the frequency of a scheduled airline.” But there are other ways Obama displays greed.Greed
The manipulation of authority is one form of greed, and Obama has relentless disregard for Congress. The latest example has been Obama taking aim at gun shows. The president’s most recent executive order attempts to clarify a distinction in federal firearms regulations between gun sales by businesses and guns sales by private individuals — this, despite the fact that Congress has steadfastly refused to extend background checks to private gun sales.Lawmakers refused to pass such a change in December just after the mass shooting in San Bernardino, California.In an article for The Conversation, Georgia State University professor Timothy D. Lytton wrote:The legislative process is intentionally designed to make it difficult to pass legislation over the strong opposition of a minority group. In this case, the extreme wing of the NRA membership has the ear of key congressional players like House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley whose support is necessary to advance legislation. The result has been legislative deadlock.Obama’s executive order is an attempt to bypass this legislative deadlock.A post in U.S. News & World Report’s “Debate Club” section stated:The House last week adopted a bill that, as the Associated Press put it, “would expedite congressional lawsuits against the chief executive for failure to enforce federal laws.” The measure was approved by a vote of 233 to 181, with every voting Republican, as well as five Democrats, voting in favor.The bill was spurred by what Republicans see as an abuse of executive power by the Obama administration. They cite executive changes to the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, as well as executive orders regarding immigration and the environment. Republicans are also displeased with the administration for failing to fully enforce federal laws on sentencing and the federal ban on gay marriage.“The Constitution gives Congress the responsibility to write the laws and the executive to enforce them,” said Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., the bill’s sponsor. “We don’t pass suggestions. We don’t pass ideas. We pass laws.” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., added: “The president’s dangerous search for expanded powers appears to be endless.”Sloth
It is no secret that Obama likes to play golf — the more famous his opponent the better, as was the case when he played Tiger Woods. The president famously brings his work to the golf course. He once played a round of golf with then-Speaker John Boehner in an attempt to get the legislative and executive branches to have better relations, or at least an improved scorecard.A few years ago, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Institute estimated that the president has spent more than twice as many hours on vacation and golf (976 hours) as he has in economic meetings.Envy
It is known that Obama is envious that he is not held in higher esteem compared to other presidents, especially their poll ratings. Obama’s job approval rating in the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll in December stood at a mediocre 43 percent. Over the seven years he has been in office, it has never gone above 61 percent — a level reached only in his early months in office. It is just 36 percent among whites.Obama hoped to be a transformative president, celebrated by liberals the way President Ronald Reagan is still celebrated by conservatives.His attempt to soothe race relations has fallen flat on its face. Today, there is more racial tension in the United States than there has been in 20 years. That’s a testament to Obama’s failure as president, and it has led many people to feel they have suffered because of his leadership over the past seven years.Yours in good times and bad,–John Myers
4)
SIREN: IG Says Hillary's Server Contained Material 'Even More Sensitive' Than Top Secret
By Guy Benson
If this early January development was a bombshell, today's revelation is a nuclear bombshell. Hillary Clinton's improper, unsecure email server appears to have endangered national security even more than previously thought -- and her excuses continue to melt away under intensifying scrutiny. Extremely serious findings from the intelligence community's Inspector General, reported exclusivelyby Fox News' Catherine Herridge:
Hillary's campaign unsuccessfully attempted to dispute the IG's previous determination that her woefully under-secure bootleg server contained intelligence deemed 'top secret;' this is even worse. Her already-dubious and legally-irrelevant "marked classified" excuse suffers another crushing blow. More:
No wonder officials inside the FBI are reportedly champing at the bit for an indictment. Her conduct makes Petraeus' criminal but limited indiscretions look like child's play. In case you'd forgotten, Mrs. Clinton insisted last year that no classified material whatsoever had passed through her private server. That lie, one of several, has now been disproven more than 1,300 times, and today's news marks another devastating disclosure. America's top diplomat trafficked in the most sensitive US intelligence secrets that exist via her private server, which she'd been explicitly and urgently warned was uniquely vulnerable to foreign penetration. This isn't about breaking some arcane rules or fudging some statements to deflect a political headache. This is about high-level state secrets being willfully and recklessly compromised by a powerful cabinet secretary in a hair-brained scheme to protect her political ambitions. And yes, it was willful. Her inner circle knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that her email arrangement was a serious problem. As Americans wonderwhether the politicized Obama Justice Department will move forward with charges against Mrs. Clinton, one wonders whether she may come to regret uttering these words:
"There should be no bank too big to fail and no individual too big to jail." —Hillary #DemDebate
The Congressional committees that received the IG's unclassified assessment should make the memo public. It seems as though Hillary Clinton is about to face more unwelcome questions.
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Hillary's campaign unsuccessfully attempted to dispute the IG's previous determination that her woefully under-secure bootleg server contained intelligence deemed 'top secret;' this is even worse. Her already-dubious and legally-irrelevant "marked classified" excuse suffers another crushing blow. More:
"There should be no bank too big to fail and no individual too big to jail." —Hillary #DemDebate
The Congressional committees that received the IG's unclassified assessment should make the memo public. It seems as though Hillary Clinton is about to face more unwelcome questions.
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