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We live in a sick world and my grandchildren are going to grow up in a sicker one.
Dagny and Abby!
Best feeling in the world, having my kids safe in my arms. Sad world we live in. Glad everyone is safe and sound. Edit- there was a bomb threat at the jcc/jao. They properly evacuated all the kids, everyone is safe and the little ones had an adventurous fire drill and are blissfully oblivious to anything beyond that. Dagny was only sad that she couldn't get her lunchbox and eat the lunch her daddy packed her. Thank you to the staff who do a great job of always protecting my kids.
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the results of the Iran Deal to date! (See 1 below.)
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Cologne smells from the stench of Muslim assaults on women but where is Hillarious and all the liberals engaged in protecting them from the Republican War on Women? (See 2 below.)
Europeans remain prediminantly anti-Semitic. (See 2a below.)
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Polls often are right and often wrong. I believe this one is wrong because I do not believe it is time to be optimistic about our nation's future for, at least , four reasons:
a) Obama has 11 more months in office and his Iran deal has allowed Iran to supplant us in The Middle East as the power that sets the pace and direction of future events.
b) During his remaining tenure, ISIS will continue to be relentless in expanding its reach, creating problems for us and what is left of our allies. I would not be surprised if another Middle East War involving Israel began.
c) We may not go into a recession but the global economy is not satisfactory and The West is conflicted between commercial tugs and acknowledging and doing something about terrorism's threats.
Until China revs up its economic engine resulting in commodity demand improvement, deflation remains a real threat.
d) Until we know who follows Obama how can one be bullish about our nation's prospects? The growth projected in our federal deficits, after Obama leaves office, can overwhelm us. (See 3, 3a. 3b and 3c below.)
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Will Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell save the senate and his Party? (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1)
The Iran Deal on Balance
We got:There is a pattern emerging on the Iran deal: we got and they got. That's how it's supposed to work -- something for something -- right? Okay.
- Iranian ballistic missile tests in violation of UN resolutions;
- Missiles fired near a U.S. aircraft carrier sailing in international waters; and
- Ten American sailors illegally captured, whose rights under the Geneva Convention were violated when they were photographed for propaganda purposes.
Oh, wait – we're probably supposed to look at the positive effects of the deal. Okay.
We got – and this is not to be minimized – although none of them should have been in Iranian prisons to begin with:
- Jason Rezaian, a newspaper reporter;
- Amir Hekmati, former Marine visiting his grandmother;
- Saeed Abedini, a Christian pastor;
- Matthew Trevithick, a student in a language program at Tehran University; and
- Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari, a businessman who opted to stay in Iran.
- Bahram Mechanic, Tooraj Faridi, and Khosrow Afghahi, pardoned before trial for violating U.S. export laws regarding shipping high tech equipment to Iran.
- Matin Sadeghi's charges dropped in the same case.
- Serving prisoners Arash Ghahreman (planning to send fiber optic gyroscopes and electron tubes to Iran), Nader Modanlo (providing satellite services to Iran) and Ali Saboonchi (providing high-tech industrial parts to Iran).
- Charges dropped against another man in the case and the company they worked for.
- Charges dropped against Mohammed Sharbaf, accused of shipping lift truck parts; Amin Ravan, accused of shipping antennas; and Mohammad Mohammadi, accused of sending aircraft parts all to Iran.
- Warrants dropped for three fugitive defendants wanted in federal court for cases involving alleged export controls or sanctions violations regarding goods headed for Iran
We did not get:
- Siamak Namazi, a businessman arrested in October and accused of espionage;
- Former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared in Iran in 2007; or
- The navigational information from the boats from which the sailors were taken
They got:
- Sanctions relief going forward;
- A closed book on prior defense related activity;
- A minimum, according to secretary of State Kerry, of $55 billion in frozen funds, and perhaps as much as $150 billion;
- An extra $1.3 billion "interest payment" on previously impounded funds; and
- The sincere and fulsome thanks of the U.S. Secretary of State for Iran's gracious behavior toward the kidnapped American sailors.
We got:
- Ayatollah Ali Khamenei carping about the U.S., noting that Tehran should "exercise care the other party implements its commitments." Complaining about the "high price" Iran had paid for sanctions relief, he added that, "expressions by some U.S. politicians in recent days are matter of pessimism."
- BG Mohammad Reza Naqdi, Commander of Iran's Basiji Force, announcing that "The annulment of sanctions against Iran's Bank Sepah and reclaiming of $1.7 billion of Iran's frozen assets after 36 years showed that the U.S. doesn't understand anything but the language of force. This money was returned for the freedom of the U.S. sp[ies] and was not related to the [nuclear] negotiations."
In the meantime, Iran ended 2015 with the notable distinction of having the most executions in a single year, with more than 1,000 hangings. That's more than three every day of the year, many from cranes in public spaces.
In the meantime, to the extent that the U.S. hoped to boost the power of Iranian "moderate reformer" Hassan Rouhani in the upcoming Iranian parliamentary elections, reformers -- such as they are -- have announced that nearly two-thirds of the 12,000 candidates who applied to run were either disqualified by Iran's Guardian Council or "withdrew."
In the meantime, Secretary Kerry on CNN dismissed Saudi Arabia's fears of Iranian nuclear capability and other potential Iranian aggression with a warning and a slap:
You can't just buy a bomb and transfer it. There's all kinds of consequences. I mean, there are huge implications of that. And Saudi Arabia knows, I believe, that that is not going to make them safer, nor is it going to be easy, because the very things that Iran went through, they would then be subject to with respect to NPT and inspection and so forth.
In the meantime, three American contractors disappeared in Baghdad, a city in which Iran has great influence.
In the meantime, the U.S. slapped at Israel on the subject of EU labeling of Israeli products from the West Bank. Asked about whether such labeling is tantamount to a boycott, which the U.S. had previously said it opposes, State Department Spokesman John Kirby launched into a tirade against settlements:
We view Israeli settlement activity as illegitimate and counterproductive to the cause of peace. We remain deeply concerned about Israel's current policy on settlements, including construction, planning, and retroactive legalizations. The U.S. government has never defended or supported Israeli settlements because administrations from both parties have long recognized that settlement activity beyond the 1967 lines, and efforts to change the facts on the ground, undermine prospects for a two-state solution.
The value of having back five Americans who should never have been arrested -- and ten sailors who should never have been kidnapped -- should not be underestimated. Former Marine Amir Hekmati told reporters:
I didn't want to let any of my fellow Marines down, and the reputation of the Marine Corps. So I tried my best to keep my head up and withstand all the pressures that were on me, some of which were very inhumane and unjust. Hearing about some of my fellow Marines supporting me really gave me the strength to put up with over four years of some very difficult times that me and my family went through... Semper Fi to all the Marines out there. It's like being born again, and I just really feel proud to be an American.
We're proud of him, too, but on balance, the deal stinks for the three missing contractors, Siamak Namazi, Robert Levinson, the United States, the Iranian people, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and all who worry about Iranian ambitions in the Middle East and beyond.
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2)
The Spreading Scent of Cologne
- The mass sexual assaults on New Year's Eve, and many through the year, are clearly the work of single, mainly young men. In packs, people can more easily give in to anti-social tendencies, but these men from North Africa and the Middle East seem to bring with them social attitudes that make it hard for them to conform with European notions of what is, and what is not, criminal or decent.
- Muslim hate speakers are given free rein to address students at many British universities. The double-standard is that the same universities have banned controversial but important speakers or just about anybody who supports the state of Israel. And if speakers are not actually banned, hordes of ideologically-inspired students and outsiders will turn up to disrupt their lectures with shouts, screams, and threats.
The city of Cologne, still famous for its scented water, has become, since last New Year's Eve, best known for the depredations and misogyny of a growing population of immigrants from North Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere. The events of that evening, when hundreds of women were assaulted, manhandled, and even raped by thousands of migrant newcomers who could not be restrained by the police, spread across the world in days if not hours.
At first, the police played down the seriousness of the incidents, but by January 10th, the BBC reported that the number of criminal cases had risen to 516, forty percent of which were related to sexual assault. According to German police, "Asylum seekers and illegal migrants from North Africa comprise the majority of suspects." This has been confirmed by Germany's interior ministry, which has stated that almost all those involved were migrants.
A scene from New Year's Eve in front of Cologne's central railway station, when hundreds of girls and women were sexually assaulted, mostly by migrants.
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Of course, Cologne was only the most prominent city to undergo such an ordeal: According to the Washington Post, "No city was hit harder than Cologne, where gangs of mostly young men are alleged to have 'hunted' women, corralling them before groping, assaulting and robbing them." A smaller number of incidents occurred in other German cities such as Hamburg, Stuttgart, and Frankfurt. In the thirteenth-century city of Bielefeld, more than 500 presumed asylum seekers attacked the Elephant Club , a night spot, and assaulted some of the women there. There were similar cases on the same evening in Austria, Switzerland, Finland and Sweden.
Regular readers of articles by authors such as Soeren Kern or Ingrid Carlqvist at the Gatestone Institute will be fully aware of the widespread breakdown of several European countries as a result of uncontrolled immigration. That includes not just the massive wave of immigration during 2015, but the steady collapse of law and order engendered by earlier influxes of Muslim migrants, notably in Germany, the United Kingdom and France. This has been exacerbated by the problem that, whereas many first generation incomers gradually found ways to integrate within mainstream society, there is a trend among third-generation children to demand rights and concessions above those granted to other citizens.
There are an estimated 750 zones urbaines sensibles ("sensitive urban zones") in France; many cities in Europe have such high levels of Muslim exclusivity that they have become no-go zones for the police, the fire brigade, social workers and others. According to one report
"It's not Norway or Europe anymore, except when there is welfare money to be collected. The police have largely given up. Early in 2010 Aftenposten stated that there are sharia patrols in this area, and gay couples are assaulted and chased away. Immigrant Fatima Tetouani says that 'Grønland is more Muslim than Morocco.'"
Three months earlier, retired police Chief Superintendent Torsten Elofsson of Malmö, Sweden's third city, declared that the crime rate in the city was skyrocketing due to the influence of uncontrolled immigration and the presence of no-go areas. The French city of Marseilles, with a 30%-40% Muslim population, has been declared "the most dangerous city in Europe" because of an increasing level of extreme violence, riots and rapes.
What appalls so many onlookers is that this damage is being done with open eyes and listening ears and that many lessons have not been learned, not just in the past year but over decades. What on earth, many of us ask, could have impelled so many European leaders -- among whom German Chancellor Angela Merkel stands out -- to have opened their arms to potentially millions of immigrants without imposing checks, registration at the point of entry, or other legal controls?
The whole situation was sparked, of course, by the staggering break-up of Syria over so many years. This break-up has led to the flight of very large numbers of genuine refugees, so many of them risking their lives to bring their children across the Mediterranean in the hope of finding safety in the European Union.
If we are to analyse what has happened, we can do no better than to start with this fact. There is in all of this an irony of mammoth proportions. Welcoming people who fear for their lives and their children's futures is a strong trait of Western civilization. Unlike so many other cultures, the Judaeo-Christian and post-Enlightenment West has a deeply-rooted commitment to human rights, and those rights are not restricted to ourselves but to all mankind. Both Judaism and Christianity are suffused with a sense of human brotherhood, and that sense has led to the modern ideals of rights for women, people of all races, homosexuals, the disabled, religious minorities, and the victims of violence. Nowhere, perhaps, has this been more visible in the United States, a country that was built on the backs of immigrants.
With this in view, and with the memory of the Holocaust and Europe's failure to prevent it in mind, it was inevitable that European countries would at first welcome the poor, hungry and distressed of Syria and other places.
But here lies the irony. Our undiscriminating welcome is leading us to welcome people many of whom seem dedicated to bringing about our internal collapse. This collapse may be far from total now, but there are grave misgivings about how Europe will look in the future, and certainly by the end of the century. Politicians, church leaders, and charity bosses have been looking at only one side of the equation.
There may not be a Huntingtonian "Clash of Civilizations" at present, but cultural clashes have been dominating the debate, even if many worthy individuals and organizations prefer to turn a blind eye to their consequences.
There have been cultural clashes throughout history, but in the last two hundred years, they have grown in size and intensity. Under the great Islamic empires, clashes between the Muslim ruling classes and religious minorities were usually held in check by the enforcement of Islamic norms. The Western imperial powers also governed by a combination of force, law and bureaucratic administration.
Modern democracies, however, are disinclined to control the behaviour of individuals and groups. They prefer to give citizens freedom to act and speak within the law. Societies have become multicultural, with tolerance of differences a source of pride. Racism has, thankfully, given way in most places to mutual acceptance. In America, Irish, Polish and Italian Catholics settled within a generation or two to become loyal citizens with a minimum of foreign cultural traits.
This is the positive side of multiculturalism. The presence of different cuisines, music, and art of course enriches society, but there is a negative side too. And that is where this irony comes to the fore. A broad Western value is that individuals may, within the bounds of decency, dress much as they please. With the exception of France, Muslim women are free to wear hijabs or other coverings. The increase of veiled women in, say, Britain, has been startling, given that wearing the hijab is now associated with Muslim self-assertion. Others, however, find the hijab and other styles of veil symbols of the oppression of women. In countries such as Saudi Arabia or Iran, "improperly" veiled women may be fined, flogged, or, in some cases, executed on charges of prostitution. In many instances, passers-by may attack them, as in the acid-throwing attacks by the Ansar-e Hezbollah gangs last year in Iran.
In Western countries, freedom of speech and expression is supposed to be a non-negotiable value of public life, with open comment and debate regarded as the life-blood of an open society (as defined, for example, by the late Sir Karl Popper). But, as case after case has shown in Europe and the United States, freedom of this kind is anathema to all devout Muslims. Novels have been banned; authors and translators attacked, flogged and murdered; cartoons have led to rioting, a film-maker was stabbed through the heart -- all for having said or illustrated something that allegedly offended some Muslims. Meanwhile, Muslim radicals make use of their freedom to write, publish, and post on the internet vast quantities of hate speech, that often includes a denial of the right to Western freedoms, not only to themselves but to everyone. What is sauce for the goose has become not sauce for the gander.
While serious attempts are made to remove terror-linked Islamic websites from the internet, there are still hundreds if not thousands of websites that present a non-terrorist form of extremism. As recently reported by London's Daily Mail, Muslim hate speakers are given free rein to address students at many British universities. The double-standard and hypocrisy is that the same universities have banned controversial but important speakers such as the feminist Germaine Greer, historian David Starkey, or just about anybody who supports the state of Israel. And if speakers are not actually banned, hordes of ideologically-inspired students and outsiders will turn up to disrupt their lectures with shouts, screams, and threats. This happened on 19 January, when a mob of anti-Israel activists at King's College, London, attacked a talk given by Ami Ayalon, now a peace activist and former head of Israeli secret service Shin Bet and commander-in-chief of the navy. The meeting was disturbed by protestors, thought to be from the KCL Action Palestine student group, who threw chairs, smashed windows, and set off fire alarms.
Not all of these bans have been down to Muslims, but many -- including the anti-Israel campaigners -- have included a large Muslim presence. Anyone who speaks out against the clash between extremist Islam and European culture is bound to be condemned as a "racist" or an "Islamophobe." Such is the illiberal "liberal" culture that sees even the mildest concern to be opposed to the "righteous" tendencies of our moral guardians -- such as highly conservative Christians like Britain's intolerant Mary Whitehouse.
The irony of the current situation not only relates to our tolerance of Islamic intolerance, but to a more visceral clash of cultures based on expectations and social habits. When Jews, Irish, Polish, and Hispanic Catholics were first thrown into the American melting pot alongside conservative Protestants, the pain of integrating was lessened because they had broadly similar attitudes on moral and social values. Religious views aside, these were people trained in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, aspiring to, or familiar with, democracy, respectful of women (if not yet believers in sexual equality), and in general averse to crime (if we ignore the mobs from each ethnic group). Finding common ground was not always easy, especially for Jews, but there was a basis upon which to forge allegiances, not least the concept of being citizens of a new country in which there were, in principle, opportunities for everyone.
The immigrants now flooding into Europe may often feel the same, but the events of New Year's Eve, taken with the no-go zones and the general anti-Western attitudes, suggest that as many of them harbour attitudes that are indeed alien, and often antithetical to, modern Western norms. Only about half of the recent immigrants are Syrian refugees desperate to escape a landscape of ruined cities and daily fighting.
Last October, the New York Times wrote:
Aid groups say the chaotic nature of the human traffic has left them without a full picture of the current wave of people reaching Europe. The United Nations refugee agency says that just over half are Syrians, followed by smaller groups from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Iraq and elsewhere. Sixty-nine percent are men, 13 percent women and 18 percent children.
The largest single group appears to be young men, open to adventure but woefully ill-informed about what they are getting into. Among the dozens of them interviewed recently in Turkey and Greece, only a few spoke any languages other than their native tongue, and most knew little about the countries they hoped to make their new home. Some were surprised to learn that beer and pork are prominent in German cuisine.
During 2015, applications for asylum within the EU came from a total of thirty countries, with Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis at the top. Eritreans also made up a substantial portion. Despite claims that the vast majority are economic migrants, not genuine war refugees, theEconomist has cast cold water on this in an article entitled "How many migrants to Europe are refugees?". Nevertheless, official statistics do not usually include illegal refugees. The chaotic conditions of 2015 made it much easier for illegals to enter, and the people-smuggling trade is known to be vast.
The mass sexual assaults on New Year's Eve, and many through the year, are clearly the work of single, mainly young men. In packs, people can more easily give in to anti-social tendencies, but these men from North Africa and the Middle East seem to bring with them social attitudes that make it hard for them to conform with European notions of what is, and what is not, criminal or decent. In North Africa and the Middle East, sex outside marriage is risky for both partners, especially in societies where honour-killings take place. The open romantic experience that is common throughout Western countries is not open to Arab men and may only be pursued in Iran through the institution of temporary (mut'a) marriage. For sexual fulfilment in those societies, marriage, or alternative options, are essential. In 2007, Navtej Dhillon, of the Brookings Institute, wrote:
Marriage, long the centerpiece of Middle Eastern life, is in crisis. The reason: a new generation of young men cannot afford to marry--a fact that's destined to exacerbate many of the region's social and political problems. Little more than a decade ago, 63 percent of Middle Eastern men married by their late 20s. Today the figure is just over 50 percent. Iran brings up the rear, at 38 percent, with the swathe of Maghreb between the Levant and Morocco only marginally better. Contrast that to Asia, which leads the nuptial race with 77 percent of men aged 25 to 29 being married, followed by 69 percent in Latin America and 66 percent in Africa.
The consequences of these trends are profound. In most Arab countries, a bachelor's life is devoid of economic and social opportunities. Marriage remains the path to adulthood, social status and legitimate sexual relationships. In contrast to Americans and Europeans, the majority of Arab men in their late 20s are not staying single by choice. They are forced into it by circumstances.
Sometimes young men in North Africa pester Western women, tourists or expatriates, in the wish that they are as hungry for sex as they themselves are and will submit to any man's advances. Local students in a Moroccan university (women as well as men) once told this writer that there had been a dearth of men in Europe after World War II and that, as a result, desperate European women had swarmed to Africa in search of "real" men who could satisfy their passions. Arguing that this was nonsense, I quickly became aware that they sincerely believed this. Any Western woman who has ever been followed by men in these countries can readily testify to how unpleasant such unwanted attention can be. Part of this unpleasantness is knowing that, if a Western woman tried to lodge a complaint with the police, she would almost certainly be held to blame, whether by dressing in a certain way or simply acting as an independent person.
That is why men who come directly from countries with a wholly different set of sexual mores, and who find themselves on the streets with (to them) scantily-dressed and attractive young women, act in the way they did on New Year's Eve. Although rapes of women do take place in North Africa and the Middle East, they are rare. Believing that Western women are happy to be raped or fondled and that, as non-Muslims, they may be regarded as "fair game," is a green light for men brought up in puritanical Islamic societies.
Fortunately, recent events have been something of a wake-up alarm. Norway is already providing classes for refugees on Norwegian cultural norms, including sexual mores. The Danish parliament has debated doing the same, and Belgium has just announced that it will makes classes on "respect for women" obligatory for all non-European migrants and refugees. Will Germany follow? Or will political correctness insist that doing so would be contemptuous of the autonomy and cultural rights of non-white people?
Denis MacEoin taught at the University of Fez from 1979 to 1980. He is currently a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute.
2a) Shocking New Israeli Report: Over 40% of Europeans Hold Antisemitic Views
By Ruthie Blum
More than 40% of European Union citizens hold antisemitic views and agree with the claim that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians and behaving like the Nazis, according to data presented during Sunday morning’s weekly Israeli cabinet meeting, the Hebrew news site NRG reported.
Ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day this week, Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister Naftali Bennett, who also serves as minister of education, presented the country’s 2015 antisemitism report, pointing to the trends emerging in Europe as a result of the spread of radical Islam; the refugee and migrant crisis; the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions movement (BDS); and the rise of the extreme Right.
The “new antisemitism” explored in the report deals mainly with Jew-hatred among Muslims, rather than fringe parties in various European countries. The report states that “anti-Israel protests and accusations that Israel is a blood-thirsty, illegitimate country creates a slippery slope that eventually leads to the assault on Jews identified with Israel.”
Another aspect of antisemitism raised in the report, according to NRG, is that it has led to Jewish “enclosure in guarded areas and to a record high in emigration from Western Europe.”
The report discusses the rise in antisemitism following what it calls a “triple alliance against the Jews – an increase in antisemitism on the part of Muslim immigrants; a rise in the extreme Right, accompanied by xenophobia and violence against minorities; and a rewriting of Holocaust history, mainly in Eastern Europe…and in Western Europe, dissemination of hate-filled propaganda by radical left-wing movements, which promote boycotts and the delegitimization of Israel and create a climate that encourages attacks on Jews for their identification with Israel.”
The most blatant antisemitic violence committed in 2015, according to the report, was the HyperCacher attack in Paris, in which four Jews were killed, two days after the Charlie Hebdo massacre. The report also cites the growing trend of individual acts of antisemitism in France, and the accompanying rise in the desire of French Jews to leave the country and seek refuge elsewhere.
The report also examines the re-emergence of classical antisemitism: “In Russia and Ukraine, the Jews are portrayed in the media as a group whose loyalty to their country is dubious.”
As for the United States, the report looks at the “new antisemitism” on campuses across America, with 75% of Jewish students saying that they have either experienced or witnessed antisemitism.
Diaspora Affairs Ministry Director General Dvir Kahana, who also attended the meeting and presented the report with Bennett, said that his office has created a multi-annual plan to combat antisemitism, in which other relevant ministries will take part. This year’s focus will include tackling incitement on the Internet, providing policy tools to governments and organizations with which to fight the phenomenon and to aid threatened communities, as well as individuals who suffer from antisemitic attacks.
This is in keeping with a report released by the UK Parliament’s Education Select Committee – also ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, according to the Jewish Chronicle.
The committee is comprised of MPs who launched an inquiry in September into the effectiveness of Holocaust education in the British school system. According to the Chronicle, Committee Chairman MP Neil Carmichael reached the conclusion that: “Too few teachers, particularly history teachers, are being trained to teach the Holocaust and our report calls on the government to act. We expect the Department for Education to ensure the support it gives to Holocaust education is as effective as possible.”
=================================================================================3)Poll: ‘Very Conservative’ Voters Are Angry Because They Are Most Optimistic About Future
by Mike Flynn
Just days away from the Iowa caucus, a new poll shows that voters identified as “very conservative” are the most hopeful about the country’s future.
More than two-thirds of “very conservative” voters, or 67 percent, believe America can recapture its past success, exemplified by the 1960s race to the moon, according to a poll of national political attitudes from Monmouth University.
In contrast, just 57 percent of all Americans believe the country can recapture the spirit that first put on a man on the moon. And only 44 percent of liberals are confident that optimism of the 1960s can be recovered.
Thirty-eight percent of all Americans believe the days of that “American spirit” are gone forever, while only 29 percent of very conservative voters believe those days are in the past. In contrast, 50 percent of voters who identify as “very liberal” say the days of the confident American spirit are in the past.
Republicans in general are also far more optimistic about the future than Democrats. By a 14-point margin, Republicans are more inclined to believe America can recapture its spirit than believe the country’s best days are in the past.
This simple question explains much of the difference between the two parties. Republicans, especially conservatives, believe more Americans are angry at Washington and political leaders than Democrats do. Republicans and conservatives are also far more likely to believe that “harsh rhetoric” today is justified.
It is precisely because conservatives, and most Republicans, are hopeful that America can recapture its spirit that they also tend to by angry and believe harsh rhetoric is justified. There really is no point to be angry about politics if one believes that the country’s best days are in the past.
All Americans, regardless of political or ideological affiliation strongly disapprove of the job Congress is doing. The most liberal and most conservative voters share an equal amount of disdain for Congress.
Democrats, however, believe the chief problem in Washington is a lack of compromise from all political leaders. Republicans, and especially conservatives, believe a lack of principle is the biggest problem. On this question, the most liberal and most conservative voters are polar opposites.
More than 70 percent of very liberal voters say it is a lack of compromise that plagues Washington, while 66 percent of very conservative voters say it is a lack of principle.
This too, though, can be explained by whether or not one believes the country’s best days are behind it. The question Monmouth asked about “recapturing the spirit that landed a man on the moon” is a very good proxy for this belief.
If one believes, as Democrats and especially liberal voters do, that America’s best days are behind it, it makes sense to worry about issues like pay equity, minimum wages and income inequality. If America’s best days are behind it, the political debate will necessarily focus on equally dividing a static, or declining, number of resources.
Resolving issues of diminishing resources is itself a function of compromise.
Believing however that America can recapture its past glory tends to focus one’s priorities on economic reform, deregulation and removing obstacles to growth. Republicans and conservatives believe federal government regulation and tax policies impede growth and prevent the country from “recapturing” the past.
Removing an impediment to growth is difficult to achieve through compromise. Does one remove half of a policy that blocks growth?
This view also goes a long way to explain anger and the question of whether harsh rhetoric is justified. If one believes that America’s best days lie ahead, but are simply blocked by a dysfunctional political class, anger and frustration are entirely rational responses. Voters who believe a broken political system is preventing the US from regaining its past success are going to be angry with that system.
Liberals and Democrats, though, who believe America’s best days are in its past have already moved on to the acceptance stage of grief. If we can’t recapture our past success, there really isn’t a need for anger or harsh rhetoric. Probably best, from that point of view, to just compromise a little and muddle through.
Democrats, after all, are far less likely than Republicans to believe that adopting the other party’s policies would greatly harm the country. The stakes, i.e. America’s future prospects, simply aren’t that high for Democrats.
3a)
3a)
The Deficit Rises Again
Obama has set up deficits and debt to soar after he leaves office.
PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES/IKON IMAGES
Perhaps you’ve heard President Obama’s talking point that the federal budget deficit has fallen by two-thirds on his watch. That overlooks that the deficit first soared on his watch, and then fell thanks largely to the GOP House and modest economic recovery, and that as he leaves office he is going to need one more asterisk: The deficit in 2016 has begun to rise again, in dollars and as a share of the economy. And after he leaves office, it takes off.
That was the news Monday in the Congressional Budget Office’s largely ignored annual budget and economic outlook. CBO’s gnomes estimate that the annual federal deficit will increase this year after six years of decline—to $544 billion from $439 billion in 2015. It will also rise as a share of the economy to 2.9% from 2.5%. The nearby table tracks the numbers across the Obama post-recession era.
This deficit increase by itself shouldn’t cause great alarm, but the reasons to care are the explanation and the trend. The deficit is rising again largely because spending is climbing rapidly again, an estimated 6% this year, or triple the rate of inflation. As a share of GDP spending will climb by 0.5-percentage points to 21.2%.
December’s budget deal explains the $32 billion increase in 2016 in discretionary spending (the kind Congress approves each year). Defense spending will “edge up slightly,” CBO says, while domestic discretionary climbs by 4%. That leaves the big money to the usual suspects—entitlements. Outlays for Medicare (net of premiums), Medicaid, the children’s health insurance program and ObamaCare subsidies will increase no less than 11%, or $104 billion, this year.
Even an estimated federal revenue increase of 4% for the year can’t keep pace with this kind of spending blowout. Receipts will rise to 18.3% of the economy, which is well above the average of 17.4% from 1966 through 2015. So even as revenues return to their historical norm, they can’t compensate for the spending on entitlements that Mr. Obama has refused to reform.
Now for the bad news. CBO estimates that deficits will continue to rise each year after Mr. Obama leaves office. “As a percentage of GDP, the deficit remains at roughly 2.9 percent through 2018, starts to rise, and reaches 4.9 percent by the end of the 10-year projection,” says the budget office. This assumes that the economy grows by 2.7% this year and 2.5% next year before levelling off to an average of 2%, which also assumes there is no recession even though this expansion is already long in the tooth into its seventh year.
As ever, the big spending drivers will be entitlements, which are projected to rise to 15% of the economy from the current 13.1% over 10 years. This is the fiscal time bomb that Mr. Obama will leave his successor, thank you very much.
By the way, all of this is the optimist’s tale. The CBO estimates assume that discretionary spending will fall over the same period to 5.2% of the economy from 6.5%. This will never happen because it means defense spending would have to shrink well below 3% of GDP, a form of gradual unilateral disarmament. So without entitlement reform or faster economic growth, the deficits are likely to be much higher.
The federal debt held by the public—the kind we have to pay back—has already climbed to 73.6% of GDP (from 39.3% in 2008) on Mr. Obama’s watch and will increase to 75.6% this year. CBO expects it will keep climbing to 86% in 2026.
We realize such unhappy realities are not supposed to intrude on a presidential campaign, and the American public long ago dropped spending and deficits as major concerns. Voters care more about the economy and terrorism, and there’s good sense to that. The deficit will never vanish without faster economic growth, and the various tax reform plans that Republicans are offering would spur growth. By all means let’s debate growth.
On the other hand, any candidate who tells you that the country can keep spending as it is without a day of reckoning probably believes Mr. Obama’s spin about his fiscal record.
3b)
Europe’s Feckless Secularism
Must even the most moderate Muslims renounce their faith to be good Europeans?
Benjamin Amsellem on Jan. 12; the Jewish teacher had been attacked the day before by a 15-year-old with a machete, in Marseille, France. PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGE
Nearly a quarter century ago, Yale’s Harold Bloom famously described America as a “dangerously religion-soaked, even religion-mad, society.”
When Europeans gaze upon our shores, this is pretty much what they see. From our strip-mall churches to the raucous intrusions of faith into our public life to our presidents routinely invoking the Almighty, they see an America hostage to primitive beliefs.
At a moment when Europol is reporting that Islamic State is planning more Paris-style terror attacks, that’s unfortunate. It’s unfortunate because America’s overt religiosity blinds Europe’s elites to the one part of the American experiment most relevant to their needs today: our secularism.
They have their own secularism, of course. In France, where it is most formalized, it is called laïcité—the idea that the state isn’t simply neutral toward religion but must banish all things religious, including religious arguments, from the public square. Here note that Marine Le Pen’s right-wing National Front is appealing to the French public on the grounds that the party would be the better enforcer of laïcité.
The idea is that when you boot religion off the public square, you remove from public life the religious friction that in centuries past fueled devastating conflicts. This same idea now animates the European Union, and in principle leads to a more liberal, more cohesive and more inclusive society.
That’s the theory.
The reality is that in many European cities today, a Jew cannot walk the streets in safety. Just this month in Marseille, a man invoked Islamic State as he tried to decapitate a Jewish schoolteacher. The attack led to suggestions that the targets of such attacks—French Jews—would be better off not wearing yarmulkes in public.
Many Jews have already given their answer: In 2015 a record number left Europe for Israel. Most were French.
Women are also losing the freedom to walk Europe’s streets in safety. On New Year’s Eve in Cologne and other German cities, hundreds of women were robbed or sexually assaulted by Arab and North African asylum seekers in what authorities now say was a planned campaign. Not only did police do nothing, they initially tried to cover it up.
The reality is not much better for sexual minorities. Only a month ago in Sweden, a teenage refugee from North Africa was charged with beating a gay man to death, and then wrapping a dead snake around the victim’s body. Even with all the sex-ed in the world, it is hard to envision European Muslims accommodating themselves any time soon to modern European notions of sexuality.
To put it another way, not only is Euro-secularism failing to persuade Europe’s growing Muslim minority of its merits; increasingly it cannot protect its own citizens.
But there’s the rub. Because Europe is not the only model of secularism. America is also a secular state.
The contrasts are illuminating. Where European secularism is built on unspoken agnosticism about the ultimate source of human dignity, American secularism is rooted in a declaration of self-evident truths about man and the divine source of his unalienable rights. The result is a nation that is a living, secular contradiction of contemporary European orthodoxy: For not only is the U.S. among the earth’s most religious nations, it is also the most modern.
In “Democracy in America,” Alexis de Tocqueville took on the European orthodoxy of his own day when he noted that, in America, free religion was the friend of liberty. The beauty of the American approach is that it avoided the aggressiveness of both extremes: the throne-and-altar alliance of the ancien régime on the one hand, and the militant secular state that emerged from the French Revolution on the other.
Perhaps most important for today, American secularism does not require people to deny their religious identities to be good Americans. In an article for the New Republic entitled “Is it Time for France to Abandon Laïcité?,” Elizabeth Winkler puts it this way:
“In the wake of terrorist attacks, it may strike some as counterintuitive to loosen—or even abandon—laïcité. But allowing Muslims greater freedom to express their beliefs in peaceful ways may make them feel more accepted and less stigmatized by the country they have made their home. It could also encourage their participation in public institutions, like schools and government workplaces, fostering their adoption of French values and identity—the very thing laïcité aims, but often fails, to do.”
Europeans have spent the past decade obsessing about bans on head scarves and burqas. Maybe it’s time they give Tocqueville a try.
3c) The humiliation of America
By Ben Cohen
3c) The humiliation of America
By Ben Cohen
So numerous were the omissions, distortions, and flights of extraordinary fancy in President Barack Obama’s Jan. 12 State of the Union address that you’d be hard-pressed to pick the most egregious passage. For what it’s worth, then, I offer my personal selection.
“On issues of global concern, we will mobilize the world to work with us, and make sure other countries pull their own weight,” Obama said. “That’s our approach to conflicts like Syria, where we’re partnering with local forces and leading international efforts to help that broken society pursue a lasting peace.”
I was dumbfounded by the notion that Syria is even in a position to “pursue a lasting peace.” With the civil war entering its fifth year, Syria no longer exists as a unified country. That half of the country’s population of 11 million has either been killed or forced to flee is a gruesome testament to that fact, as well as the unmitigated failure of our policy.
The Iranian and Russian-backed regime of Bashar al-Assad didn’t merit a mention in Obama’s remarks, perhaps because doing so would have reminded the president’s audience that Tehran and Moscow are calling the shots in Syria. Assad’s continued survival is largely down to Obama’s refusal to solidify his vague commitment to a future for Syria without the dictator in place. And while Obama would have us believe that there is no long-term future for Assad, the Russians and the Iranians have put boots on the ground for the express purpose of ensuring that he does have one.
Which brings me to the siege of Madaya, a town to the north of Damascus that was once a winter resort. For over a year, Madaya has been an open-air concentration camp. In early January, photos emerged of some of its 40,000 starving and emaciated residents, who have subsisted on such delicacies as stray dogs and boiled leaves for several months now. There was something of an outcry over these images, enough to persuade the Syrian regime to allow a U.N. aid convoy entry into the town. But the underlying strategy here—using the denial of food and medical assistance as a weapon of war—has not changed.
Responsibility for this crime against humanity lies squarely with Assad’s forces and their allies from Hezbollah, the Lebanese Islamist terror group that is also heavily supported by Iran—and not with Islamic State. And if the mockery of Madaya’s plight by Assad’s supporters on social media is anything to go by, it is a crime this brutal and vicious regime is extremely proud of.
On Facebook and Twitter, Assad loyalists have posted photographs of sumptuous banquets—huge plates of of kebabs, grilled fish, salads, desserts, and the like—“in solidarity with the siege of Madaya.” As Beirut Syndrome, a blog, pointed out, some of these people have fallen for the regime’s propaganda that the siege is a myth. Others, however, are positively rejoicing at the suffering of Madaya’s inhabitants, and are using the images of food for their amusement.
Take, for example, Jihad Zahri, a cameraman with Lebanon’s Al Jadeed TV, who posed for a selfie in front of his well-stocked refrigerator. Or take Charbel Khalil, a Lebanese television producer, who posted an image of starving Somalis on Facebook with the caption, “The Mayor of besieged Madaya and some members of the town council.” (Because, of course, if someone is starving, then they must be from Africa—get it?) These two specimens were among dozens of similar posts.
The point here is not so much the moral sewer these online shenanigans represent. One reasonably expects citizens of a civilized society like ours to recognize cruelty when they see it. Rather, it is the fact that Western policy has enabled this kind of behavior. Our collapse in the face of these war crimes simply encourages the dehumanizing rhetoric that Madaya’s people have been subjected to. That it has now reached the level of gloating is not an aberration, but a natural outgrowth of the Syria policy that this White House has pursued—indeed, Madaya would very likely have been spared the siege had Obama made good on his 2013 threat to bomb Assad’s forces following their deployment of chemical weapons against their own population.
For that reason, any talk from Obama about healing Syria’s broken society is simply nauseating. The president’s sole imperative is to keep the nuclear deal with Iran alive, and he will not even look at a policy that might undermine this critical component of his legacy.
That is why Assad, Hezbollah, and their Iranian backers will carry on getting away with these monstrous atrocities in Syria. It is why Islamic State has been able to exploit Sunni Arab resentment against the ruling Alawite minority to deadly effect.
It is also why the Iranian regime can seize U.S. naval personnel, parade them before news cameras in violation of the Geneva Convention, and then secure the gratitude of our own secretary of state, John Kerry, for finally releasing them. And it is why, when Obama makes the fatuous claim that the “people of the world do not look to Beijing or Moscow to lead—they call us,” America’s adversaries laugh as heartily and cynically as those who gain pleasure from the suffering of Madaya.
There is an alternative, as there always has been: working for the elimination of the Assad regime and Islamic State. Make that point to White House officials, and you will encounter a patronizing grin followed by an explanation as to why we can’t be the world’s policeman, why we can’t afford to antagonize Russia and Iran, and why the threat to our own security from the Middle East has been grotesquely exaggerated by folks who don’t realize that the real challenge is climate change.
Excuse follows excuse in order to camouflage America’s international humiliation. But make no mistake: we have been humiliated, and Obama’s successor will have to forge a foreign policy from this point of departure.
Ben Cohen, senior editor of TheTower.org & The Tower Magazine, writes a weekly column for JNS.org on Jewish affairs and Middle Eastern politics. His writings have been published in Commentary, the New York Post, Haaretz, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. He is the author of “Some of My Best Friends: A Journey Through Twenty-First Century Antisemitism” (Edition Critic, 2014).
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4)Ending the Stealth Filibuster
4)Ending the Stealth Filibuster
It’s a recipe for gridlock if a Senate minority controls which bills can be taken up.
By
Conservatives are angry, and whether they know it or not abuse of the filibuster is a big reason. Republicans hold a 54-46 majority in the Senate, which voters understandably thought would give the GOP the power to resist Barack Obama’s dangerous agenda. But procedural nonsense stands in the way.
No major bill (budget reconciliation is an exception) can even be brought to the Senate floor for debate or amendment without a “motion to proceed to consider,” which requires 60 votes to pass. That means even if all 54 Republicans agree to take up a bill, at least six Democrats must also come to the Senate floor and vote “yes,” or the motion is defeated.
This stealth filibuster, one of the Senate’s most insidious and hidden-in-plain-sight secrets, denies the majority the essential capability to vote on, or even debate, critical legislation supported by the overwhelming majority of Americans—for instance, a bill to stop the nuclear deal with Iran.
In other words, the Senate minority can easily and nearly always prevent “the world’s most deliberative body” from actually deliberating, no matter what the majority says or does. Could there be a more perfect recipe for gridlock in today’s polarized, truth-be-damned political era?
Democrats know that the American people are largely oblivious to this secret leverage they so routinely abuse. This has allowed Democrats to force the House of Representatives, especially its leadership, into an impossible conundrum: Either pass legislation that Democrats approve of (the only way to get it through the Senate), which enrages the principled but misinformed Republican base; or allow Democrats to shut down the government, for which Republicans will be unjustly but entirely blamed.
In fact, Democrats are hoping to engineer an extended government shutdown before this fall’s election. Extensive polling by both sides suggests that a government shutdown would hand Democrats decisive leverage to retain the presidency and retake control of the Senate. Eight years of Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, with Supreme Court vacancies on the horizon, would turn what’s left of the constitutional order into kindling.
The filibuster rules must be altered and their abuse raised to such a high public profile that it becomes politically untenable. Otherwise it will remain impossible to enact policies necessary to save this country.
The primary goal of House conservatives is not to eliminate the filibuster, nor even to make the Senate “legislatively efficient” for the majority. Our goal is to adjust the filibuster so at least the American people will know who is responsible for the deadlock in Congress.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has the power to force a negotiated and bipartisan adjustment to the filibuster by using the leverage of the “nuclear option”—the ability of a simple majority of senators to change procedural rules. Less than three years ago, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid used the nuclear option to break the filibuster on judicial confirmations.
Those who object to these changes often point out that when Republicans were in the minority the filibuster empowered them to stop legislative overreach. This is true. However, this argument does not consider the long-term advantage of holding Democrats (and Republicans) distinctly accountable for their positions and the performance of their policies.
By continuing to stand by while Democrats use this stealth filibuster to stoke the rage within the GOP base and the American people, Senate Republicans hasten the day when angry voters will put them back into the minority (perhaps more permanently). When that time comes, Democrats will not hesitate to force changes in the filibuster for anything and everything on their agenda.
The filibuster rules have made Congress impotent against a rogue president, robbed lawmakers of their constitutional “power of the purse,” and destroyed government accountability. Unless the filibuster is changed, the American people may very unwisely declare a pox on both chambers of Congress. If that happens, future generations, along with the Founding Fathers’ dreams for all that America might be, will be at grave risk.
Mr. Franks, a Republican from Arizona, is the chairman of the House subcommittee on the Constitution.
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