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.Two biggest blunders of Congress that logic demands correcting.
Something I wrote about restoring Glass Steagell and getting rid of Dodd - Frank. (See 1 below.)
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Does commerce come first? Will the West shoot itself in the foot? (See 2 below.)
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Sowell on the Oscars.
We need to create a Federal Agency to select Oscar winners. That way everything will be fair!
Still polarizing!(See 3 and 3a below.)
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Hamas and the Middle East's anti-truth media. (See 4 and 4a below.)
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Why Trump? (See 5 below.)
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Dick
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1)One of the biggest blunders Congress ever made was repeal of Glass Steagell (The Glass–Steagall legislation was enacted by the United States Congress in 1933 as part of the 1933 Banking Act, amended as part of the 1935 Banking Act, and most of it was repealed in 1999by the Graham–Leach–Bliley Act (GLBA).)
Why? Because it allowed banks to speculate through investment banking. Commercial and investment banking are distinctly different and entail distinctly different personalities and compensation packages and incentives.
The second worst piece of legislation was enactment of Dodd-Frank. Why? Because it brought government bureaucrats further into the banking system, increased needless over regulation and cost burdens and ultimately will accomplish the unintended, ie. driving smaller local banks out of business and making the banking system less competitive and more consolidated into larger behemoth banks.
I propose the following:
Legislation forcing commercial banks to divest their investment banking departments and connections . They can be spun out to existing stockholders or turned into publically held vehicles if private.
At the present time our economic system is being restrained by a myriad of problems - over regulation and red tape from Obama’s socialistic and misguided actions which has resulted in our own nation’s pitiful recovery. China’s economic slowdown. The Middle East. Actions taken by The Fed regarding the lowering of interest rates and now the reverse from this action. A tax system that favors special interests, is too complex, looks as if it was designed by Rube Goldberg and is anathema to needed growth. The energy decline. World debt levels and our own outrageous and unbridled spending .The decline in the number of true Democracies, the rise of Russian oppressive and aggressive actions combined with our own feckless behavior and withdrawal. Islamist terrorism and Iran supplanting America as the pre-eminent Middle Eastern power threatening our allies. Finally, a confused 2016 election process which has focused on and elevated into prominence non-traditional candidates which has left many potential voters disheartened and confused.
Furthermore, one cannot ignore the divisiveness caused by the actions and policies of the worst president in our nation’s history.
All of these factors has resulted in negative psychology on the part of disaffected citizens and consequently a market correction, which might have been overdue, but has reached red flag proportions and done serious damage to consumer purchasing power, notwithstanding the positive impact of lower energy prices which is a two edged sword.
By disconnecting commercial banks from their investment banking functions and restoring them to Glass Steagall status several positive things will/should happen.
First: commercial banks will be in a position of making loans to their former investment banking entities and this will stimulate sorely needed bank profits and create capital provisions from the free market and not from
The Fed.
Second, these spun off investment banking entities can then invest in companies worth saving from the debacle taking place in the oil patch because America benefits from energy independence. Many of the debt of these predominantly oil shale companies can be re-acquired for pennies on the dollar and this alone will result in improved free cash flow opportunities thus restoring many of these companies to health a win win all around..
Finally, from a political ploy it will blunt the nefarious actions proposed by the two primary Demwit candidates who want to punish and control the banking system even more with increased regulations and restrictions.If the legislation is enacted swiftly it could serve as an emotional and psychological boost and help prevent the economy avoid going into another recession which The Fed is ill prepared, at this time, to defend. In turn, the markets might calm down as volatility wanes and certainly all of this positive energy would inure to the benefit of a Republican controlled Congress come the election but more importantly, it would be good for America. Is not that a politically unique stance?
Avowedly, Capitalism has its faults, capitalists have, all too often, abused the system and when they do they should be punished to the fullest extent of the law but we have gotten too comfortable with politically killing the chicken that has enabled America to become the greatest economic success story in history and which has done more to elevate the wealth and thus, freedom, of its citizenry.
Renewal of Glass Steagall will return us to a banking environment which served us well for decades. If it was not broke why did we fix it?
If the above proposal and thinking are given the consideration I believe they are due I would then move to a debate about eliminating various entire departments of the government and any functions that are truly worthy be moved to remaining departments.
I would begin with eliminating the department of Education and Energy as a start and, from the momentum generated and benefits derived, I would urge each government agency and department be thoroughly examined and reduced to their basic and essential original service intent. Government has grown amoebic and like Topsy needs to be slimmed, curbed and returned to its rightful cage.
I know the chances of this logic is slim to none and this is why I remain dispirited about America’s chance to remain great and why Congress is held in such negative repute along with the political system in general.
Thus, it is little wonder the likes of Bernie, Hillarious and Donald are desperation candidates on the ascendancy.
POGO was right – The Enemy is Us!
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2)
The West Must Curb Tehran’s Mideast Ambitions, Says Israeli Ambassador to Italy as Iranian President Lands in Rome
The West must “impose limits and bars” on Iran’s regional ambitions to help stabilize the Middle East, Israel’s ambassador to Italy said, as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani arrived for what was being billed as a major business trip in Europe, Italian news service AnsaMed reported on Monday.
Naor Gilon, Israel’s top diplomat in Italy, said Iran’s hand was involved in several major regional political crises, including in Bahrain, Yemen and Lebanon, where Iranian-backed Hezbollah has been armed by Tehran with some 100,000 rockets and missiles.
“Israel does not have a border with Iran, but Iranians are on its borders,” said Gilon, referring to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, both of which received funding and weapons technology from Iran.
“I hope it doesn’t become a victor’s parade by the king of the world to whom everything is allowed,” said Gilon, referring to Rouhani’s visit, the first by an Iranian president in 16 years. He reminded the paper of Iran’s ongoing human rights abuses, including the hanging of “2,000 people … some of them for political reasons.”
“The rights of women, of gays, of minorities are not respected. Out of 3,000 reformist candidates for the new Parliament of Tehran, only 30, or 1.0%, obtained permission to stand in the election,” he said. Rouhani himself criticized the country’s powerful clerical body, the Guardian Council, for ruling out all but 1% of the reformist candidates in Iran.
The Israeli ambassador also criticized Iran for organizing a “competition to ridicule the Holocaust,” especially around January 27, which is the UN-designated international Holocaust Remembrance Day. He was likely referring to the International Holocaust Cartoon Contest, which was organized by an Iranian newspaper in response to a Danish paper’s Muhammad cartoon contest.
Rouhani will be holding meetings with Italian President Sergio Mattarella — who has called for a united front against terrorism — and Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who is also seen as warm to relations with Israel.
Noting that Israel and Italy stood together on fighting terrorism during a speech at the Knesset last summer, Renzi said, according to the Jerusalem Post, “We will not stop fighting, together with [Israel], on the right side, together with the US and the UN and Russia and Arab states like Egypt and Jordan, led by great statesmen who want to bring us to peace and stability.”
Rouhani’s trip in Europe came shortly after the announcement of trade deals with China, valued at about $600 billion, and a few weeks after international sanctions were lifted with the implementation of the nuclear deal between world powers and Tehran. According to the BBC, Rouhani was expected to oversee new contracts with steel company Danieli, and meet with Pope Francis.
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3)
The Demand for Villains
By Thomas Sowell
The assumption seems to be that different groups would be proportionally represented if somebody were not doing somebody else wrong. That assumption carries great weight in far more important things than Academy Awards and in places more important than Hollywood, including the Supreme Court of the United States.
In an earlier era, the groupthink assumption was that groups that did not succeed as often, or as well, were genetically inferior. But is our current groupthink assumption based on any more hard evidence?
Having spent decades researching racial and ethnic groups around the world, I have never yet found a country in which all groups -- or even most groups -- are even roughly equally represented in most endeavors.
Nor have I been the only one with that experience. The great French historian Fernand Braudel said, "In no society have all regions and all parts of the population developed equally." A study of military forces around the world failed to find a single one in which in which the ethnic makeup of the military was the same as that of the society.
My own favorite example of unrepresentativeness, however, is right at home. Having watched National Football League games for more than 50 years, I have seen hundreds of black players score touchdowns, but I have never seen one black player kick the extra point.
What are we to conclude from this? Do those who believe in genetics think that blacks are just genetically incapable of kicking a football?
Since there have long been black colleges with football teams, have they had to import white players to do the opening kickoff, so that the games could get underway? Or to kick the extra point after touchdowns? Apparently not.
How about racist discrimination? Are racists so inconsistent that they are somehow able to stifle their racism when it comes to letting black players score touchdowns, but absolutely draw the line when it comes to letting blacks kick the extra point?
With all the heated and bitter debates between those who believe in heredity and those who believe in environment as explanations of group differences in outcomes, both seem to ignore the possibility that some groups just do not want to do the same things as other groups.
I doubt whether any of the guys who grew up in my old neighborhood in Harlem ever went on to become ballet dancers. Nor is it likely that this had anything to do with either genetics or racism. The very thought of becoming a ballet dancer never crossed my mind and it probably never occurred to the other guys either.
If people don't want to do something, chances are they are not going to do it, even if they have all the innate potential in the world, and even if all the doors of opportunity are wide open.
People come from different cultures. They know different things and want different things.
When I arrived in Harlem from the South as a kid, I had no idea what a public library was. An older boy who tried to explain it to me barely succeeded in getting me to get a library card and borrow a couple of books. But it changed the course of my life. Not every kid from a similar background had someone to change the course of his life.
When Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe arrived in New York in the 19th century, they were even poorer than blacks from the South who arrived in Harlem in the 20th century. But the Jews crowded into public libraries because books had been part of their culture for centuries. New York's elite public high schools and outstanding free colleges were practically tailor-made for them.
Groups differ from other groups all over the world, for all sorts of reasons, ranging from geography to demography, history and culture. There is not much we can do about geography and nothing we can do about the past. But we can stop looking for villains every time we see differences.
That is not likely to happen, however, when grievances can be cashed in for goodies -- and polarize a whole society in the process.
3a)
Still Polarizing after All These Years
By Victor Davis Hanson // Works and Days hosted by PJMedia
Polls confirm that Obama is the most polarizing president in recent memory. There is little middle ground: supporters worship him; detractors in greater number seem to vehemently dislike him. Why then does the president, desperate for some sort of legacy, continue to embrace polarization?
A few hours before delivering that State of the Union, President Obama met with rapper Kendrick Lamar. Obama announced that Lamar’s hit “How Much a Dollar Cost” was his favorite song of 2015. The song comes from the album To Pimp a Butterfly; the album cover shows a crowd of young African-American men massed in front of the White House. In celebratory fashion, all are gripping champagne bottles and hundred-dollar bills; in front of them lies the corpse of a white judge, with two Xs drawn over his closed eyes. So why wouldn’t the president’s advisors at least have advised him that such a gratuitous White House sanction might be incongruous with a visual message of racial hatred? Was Obama seeking cultural authenticity, of the sort he seeks by wearing a T-shirt, with his baseball cap on backwards and thumb up?
To play the old “what if” game that is necessary in the bewildering age of Obama: what if President George W. Bush had invited to the White House a controversial country Western singer, known for using the f- and n- words liberally in his music and celebrating attacks on Bureau of Land Management officers? What if Bush had also declared that the singer’s hit song—perhaps a celebration of the Cliven Bundy protest—was the president’s favorite in 2008, from an album whose grotesque cover had a crowd of NASCAR-looking, white redneck youth bunched up with an African-American official dead at their feet? And what if the next day, Bush told the nation that he regretted not being able to bring the country together? Would there have been media calls for Bush’s impeachment?
Tearing the country apart is the unfortunate legacy of Obama—and it will continue in Pavlovian fashion until January 2017. Each unconstitutional executive order circumventing the Congress seems to warrant a stern presidential lecture that Obama once taught constitutional law. At some point, he accepted that a majority of America did not embrace his views and probably would not ratify his agenda.
But by demonizing his successor, playing crude racial politics, trashing the wealthy in the abstract and courting them in the concrete, firing up urban young women by asserting that they were victims of a culture of white (and crude) Christian men prone to sexually assault 20% of the women on campus, mobilizing the poor to ensure their denied fair share of opportunity, and reminding Latinos that border security was tantamount to crude racism, Obama brilliantly cobbled together enough aggrieved victims to provide a 51% national majority. And such outrage successfully fueled record voter turnout. He created that winning paradigm; yet its racial aspect is not transferable to other liberals like Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. And it will remain Obama’s permanent legacy that will ripple throughout the country for years.
It was Obama who reminded America that its successful people did not build their own businesses, that they should at some point have made enough money, that it was not the time for them to profit, that spreading the wealth around was good for everyone, and on and on. We owe to Obama a now enshrined dislike of the “1%”, who, we are told ad nauseam, do not, even as taxes rise on them, ever pay “their fair share.”
By the same token, Obama introduced the nation (“all across the country”) to his personal pastor, the virulent racist and anti-Semite Rev. Jeremiah Wright (“my pastor, the guy who puts up with me, counsels me, listens to my wife complain about me. He’s a friend and a great leader. Not just in Chicago, but all across the country”), and an array of incendiary figures, from Father Pfleger to Bill Ayers, who still pop up in the public culture. The common theme was take-no-prisoners radicalism, consistent with Obama’s grievances earlier aired in his mythographic memoir. (“There was something about him that made me wary, a little too sure of himself, maybe. And white.” Or, “I never emulate white men and brown men whose fates didn’t speak to my own. It was into my father’s image, the black man, son of Africa, that I’d packed all the attributes I sought in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela.”) All this racial angst from an upper-middle-class prep schooler of mixed heritage, for much of his life known as Barry Soetoro.
Obama himself admirably throughout his campaigns has called for healing and unity—even as he offered quips like “typical white person” and riffs on xenophobic clingers of Pennsylvania and the inability of less aware, superstitious Americans to appreciate his own genius. Supporters in Chicago style were advised by Obama to “get in their faces” and bring “a gun to a knife fight.” Michelle Obama did not offer healing but instead offered up admission that she had never been proud of her country until Obama ran for presidency, that it was a downright mean country that always raised the bar on people like herself.
All that invective was deemed aberrant, artifacts of a campaign that would disappear during sober governance as Obama bound up the nation’s wounds.
Yet for over seven years we have experienced gratuitous racial editorializing amid trumped-up psychodramas, like the silly Skip Gates beer summit, the release of the Black Panthers who had intimidated voters at polls, Attorney General Eric Holder’s serial editorializing about a “nation of cowards” and “my people,” and Obama’s periodic implications of white racism explaining criticism of his lackluster performance. In contrast, Islamic terrorism earned euphemisms like “workplace violence”, “overseas contingency operations,” “largely secular,” and “man-caused disasters.” What if Eric Holder has said of Islam that it was a “culture of cowards” for not addressing Islamic radicalism?
And again, what if a Republican president had advised white supporters to “punish their enemies at the polls”? Or what if a President Bill Clinton had weighed in during the explosive and ongoing racially charged O.J. trial to declare that the second daughter he never had might have looked like Nicole Simpson?
Once Obama set the tone, lots of opportunist groups followed suit. The racist firebrand Al Sharpton went from a pariah to a trusted White House advisor. The birther and racialist Van Jones became an administration advisor on “green jobs.” “White privilege” became a campus gospel, as if the Obama children were forever victimized in a way the offspring of Appalachian coal miners were not. “Hands up, don’t shoot” and Trayvon Martin reminded us that facts, crime statistics about the prevalence of shootings, and empiricism did not matter. Barack Obama would use such racially driven animosity all the way to the UN, where he sermonized about “Ferguson.” In the Obama era, every celebrity and politician who did not take out progressive insurance was a gaffe away from career destruction.
Sometimes the divides turned national, as Obama verbally distanced himself from the traditions and history of his own country. His apology tours, his Cairo speech, his al Arabiya interview, his trite bowing, and his sermonizing and interviews about animosity toward him that was supposedly always race-based reminded Americans of their checkered past—and seemed designed to remind the world that Obama, by such distancing, was not responsible for the mess that is the U.S.
Obama offered Americans no sense of exceptionalism—an unwarranted premise smacked down as no more justified than the Greek or British sense of singularity. Homophobic, sexist, and religiously intolerant Iranians were praised by the administration when they released American soldiers after gratuitously humiliating them; the traitor Bowe Bergdahl, not the Benghazi heroes, earned White House tributes and photo-ops. Such gestures were not so much ideological as petty and designed to irritate.
Opponents of the Iran deal were kindred extremist spirits to Iranian theocrats. Republican opponents were veritable terrorists with bombs strapped to their bodies. Christians hop on their moral “high horses” and needed to be reminded of that chauvinism, endemic since the Crusades and Inquisition, at national prayer breakfasts. Mass shootings were blamed on the foul culture of legal gun owners and the NRA. One cannot disagree with Barack Obama without motives questioned and character besmirched.
Obama’s divisiveness begat the mirror-image angry candidacy of Donald Trump, whose vocabulary was so indebted to Obama’s own—as if “hope and change” had begot “Make America great again.” Obama has lost his party the Congress and most of the state legislatures. He has destroyed the centrist wing of the Democratic Party, and made his media apologists into caricatures of ministry of information megaphones. Obama ushered in an unprecedented any-means-necessary government amorality. Lois Lerner, a politicized IRS and a defunct ICE are its dividends. The secretary of Defense—four so far—is now a cabinet post designed to spawn after-office tell-all indictments of Obama. Scandals are normal now at the VA, IRS, NSA, ATF, EPA, and GSA, and from the AP surveillance and Solyndra to the Benghazi video-did-it talking points. The administration has reduced once-cherished departments such as the Secret Service, State Department, Justice Department and NASA into caricatures of incompetency.
Just as 2016 will be a dangerous year abroad as enemies seek to cash in their chips and consolidate their aggressions, so too divisive groups will surmise that there is one more year left to do try one more time what was impossible in the past and will be perhaps in the near future as well.
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4)
TEN YEARS OF HAMAS RULE: THE PALESTINIANS MUST SOLVE THEIR DIVIDE BEFORE PEACE WITH ISRAEL
Ten years ago today, Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, taking 76 of the 132 parliamentary seats (74 plus two independents). The Palestinian faction best known for a campaign of suicide bombings in the 1990s formed a new government some two months later, thrusting Palestinian nationalism into a crisis from which it has never recovered. Washington’s foreign policy establishment still fails to grasp its impact, which may explain its recurring inability to broker the creation of a Palestinian state at peace with Israel.
The Hamas victory was an undeniable black eye for American efforts to democratize the Middle East as envisaged by George W. Bush. The secular Fatah faction, Washington’s choice as the pragmatic incumbent ruling party in the Palestinian Authority (PA), lost the elections because of the growing (and correct) public perception that the party was ossified and corrupt.
This perception still dogs the Fatah party to this day. But Washington was willing to tolerate corruption and declining legitimacy in exchange for Fatah’s readiness to engage in peace talks with Israel, whose existence Hamas refuses to recognize.
With pressure from Washington and Israel to keep Hamas from power, Fatah blocked the Islamist faction from forming a government. It didn’t take long after that for bloody clashes to erupt in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Seeking to regain control, PA President Mahmoud Abbas, who had only ascended to power one year earlier after the sudden death of Yasser Arafat, called for early elections.
Hamas bristled, accusing Abbas of launching a coup against their democratically elected government. The Islamist group soon carried out a string of abductions of Fatah and PA figures. According to one NGO, “limbs were fired at to cause permanent physical disabilities” and, in some cases, Hamas shot their political foes point blank in the head.
In an attempt to halt the fighting, the late King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia invited the two factions to Mecca for a dialogue. After three days, the sides reached an understanding, leading to the February 8, 2007 Mecca Agreement. The two sides agreed to a national unity government, but violence soon erupted on the Palestinian streets again. The enmity was simply too deep.
The anarchy continued through the spring, leading inexorably to Hamas’s military offensive in Gaza that began on June 7, 2007. The ensuing six-day war left Gaza smoldering, with Hamas firmly in control. The PA forces, which had been trained and armed by the United States, failed miserably. Some deserted while some even joined Hamas. According to credible reports, Hamas’s tactics were utterly brutal, including summary executions and pushing Fatah faction members off of tall buildings to their death. All told, the war claimed the lives of 161 Palestinians. At least 700 were wounded.
Ten years on, the intra-Palestinian conflict is a glaring blind spot among Western policymakers. The enmity between the two factions challenges longstanding assertions of a unified Palestinian national identity. The Palestinian battle for primacy also injects new complexities into the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The conflict, in fact, is now a three-way tug-of-war between Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, where any one move can impact the delicate balance between the three.
After a decade of failed reconciliation efforts and a collapsed unity government in 2015, the intra-Palestinian conflict now appears intractable. The Gaza Strip remains firmly in the hands of Hamas, while the Fatah faction clings to the West Bank with the help of Israeli security and intelligence. There are two separate Palestinian governments with their own bureaucracies, two sets of cadres of political elites, two distinct economies, and increasingly two different cultures.
Nevertheless, Washington continues to call for a single Palestinian state. It’s a call that echoes across most Western capitals, too. The overriding assumption is that deft diplomacy coupled with Israeli territorial concessions could pave the way for the Palestinian Authority, unpopular and corrupt as it may be, to regain the moral and military high ground from Hamas and somehow bring the Gaza Strip back under its jurisdiction. These plans remain vague, to say the least.
Equally difficult to discern is the logic behind Washington’s long-held belief that Islamist extremists in the Palestinian territories are distinct from their counterparts elsewhere in the region—namely, that Hamas’s extremist ideology was primarily a reaction to Israel. As while this may explain much of Hamas’s motivations, one cannot ignore the fact that the Islamist group continues to clash with Fatah on broader issues like the role of Islam in society and the validity of secular governance. Indeed, these debates mirror the upheaval we have witnessed across the Middle East since the eruption of the Arab Spring in 2011.
The near collapse of the post-colonial system since the Arab Spring has challenged almost all of our assumptions on how to bring order to the chaos of the Middle East. Yet, the perceived need to create a single Palestinian state spanning the West Bank and Gaza has endured. Ten years on, the Palestinians are still divided—both ideologically and territorially. It may be time to acknowledge that if they can't peacefully resolve their own territorial conflict, they certainly are not likely to resolve the one with Israel.
Jonathan Schanzer is vice president for research at Washington D.C.-based policy institute the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and author of Hamas vs Fatah: The Struggle for Palestine.
Palestinians: Western Media's Ignorance and Bias
§ Foreign journalists based in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv have for years refused to report on the financial corruption and human rights violations that are rife under the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas regimes. Palestinian "suffering" and the "evil" of the Israeli "occupation" are the only admissible topics.
§ Another Ramallah-based colleague shared that a few years ago he received a request from a cub correspondent to help arrange an interview with Yasser Arafat. Except at that point, Arafat had been dead for several years. Fresh out of journalism school and unknowledgeable about the Middle East, the journalist was apparently considered by his editors a fine candidate for covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
§ Western reporters would do well to remember that journalism in this region is not about being pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian. Rather, it is about being "pro" the truth, even when the truth runs straight up against what they would prefer to believe.
Two Western journalists recently asked to be accompanied to the Gaza Strip to interview Jewish settlers living there.
No, this is not the opening line of a joke. These journalists were in Israel at the end of 2015, and they were deadly serious.
Imagine their embarrassment when it was pointed out to them that Israel had completely pulled out of the Gaza Strip ten years ago.
You have to have some pity for them. These foreign colleagues were rookies who aimed to make an impression by traveling to a "dangerous" place such as the Gaza Strip to report on the "settlers" living there. Their request, however, did not take anyone, even my local colleagues, by surprise.
These "parachute journalists," as they are occasionally called, are catapulted into the region without being briefed on the basic facts of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Sadly, correspondents such as these are more the rule than the exception. A particular clueless British reporter springs to mind:
When Israel assassinated Hamas's founder and spiritual leader, Ahmed Yassin, in 2004, a British newspaper dispatched its crime reporter to Jerusalem to cover the event. To this reporter, the region, as well as Hamas, were virgin territory. His editors had sent him to the Middle East, he said, because no one else was willing to go.
Well, our hero reported on the assassination of Ahmed Yassin from the bar of the American Colony Hotel. His byline claimed that he was in the Gaza Strip and had interviewed relatives of the slain leader of Hamas.
Sometimes one feels as if one is some sort of a lightning rod for these tales. Another Ramallah-based colleague shared that a few years ago he received a request from a cub correspondent to help arrange an interview with Yasser Arafat. Except at that point, Arafat had been dead for several years. Fresh out of journalism school and unknowledgeable about the Middle East, the journalist was apparently considered by his editors a fine candidate for covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In the three decades of covering this beat, journalists of this type have become quite familiar to me. They board a plane, read an article or two in the Times and feel ready to be experts on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Some of them have even assured me that before 1948 there was a Palestinian state here with East Jerusalem as its capital. Like the ill-informed young colleagues who wished to interview the nonexistent Jewish settlers in the Gaza Strip of 2015, they were somewhat taken aback to learn that prior to 1967, the West Bank had been under the control of Jordan, while the Gaza Strip had been ruled by Egypt.
Is there some difference between an Arab citizen of Israel and a Palestinian from the West Bank or Gaza Strip? My foreign colleagues may well not be able to say. Does the Hamas charter really state that the Islamist movement seeks to replace Israel with an Islamic empire? If so, my international co-workers may not be able to tell you.
One memorable journalist, several years ago, asked to visit the "destroyed" city of Jenin, where "thousands of Palestinians had been massacred by Israel in 2002." She was referring to the IDF operation in the Jenin refugee camp where nearly 60 Palestinians, many of them gunmen, and 23 IDF soldiers were killed in a battle.
Pity aside, this degree of incomprehension -- and professional laziness -- is difficult to imagine in the Internet age.
But when it comes to covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, ignorance apparently is bliss. Misconceptions about what goes on here plague the international media. The binary good guy/bad guy designation tops the list. Someone has to be the good guy (the Palestinians are assigned that job) and someone has to be the bad guy (the Israelis get that one). And everything gets refracted through that prism.
Yet the problem is deeper still. Many Western journalists covering the Middle East do not feel the need to conceal their hatred for Israel and for Jews. But when it comes to the Palestinians, these journalists see no evil. Foreign journalists based in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv have for years refused to report on the financial corruption and human rights violations that are rife under the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas regimes. They possibly fear being considered "Zionist agents" or "propagandists" for Israel.
Finally, there are the local journalists hired by Western reporters and media outlets to help the cover the conflict. These journalists may refuse to cooperate on any story that is deemed "anti-Palestinian." Palestinian "suffering" and the "evil" of the Israeli "occupation" are the only admissible topics. Western journalists, for their part, are keen not to anger their Palestinian colleagues: they do not wish to be denied access to Palestinian sources.
Thus, the international media's indifference in the face of the current wave of stabbings and car-rammings against Israelis should come as no surprise. One would be hard-pressed to find a Western journalist or a media organization referring to Palestinian assailants as "terrorists." In fact, international headlines often show more sympathy toward Palestinian attackers who are killed in the line of aggression than toward the Israelis who were attacked in the first place.
Of course, the above tales hardly apply to all foreign journalists. Some correspondents from the US, Canada, Australia and Europe are both very knowledgeable and very fair. Unfortunately, however, these represent but a small group among mainstream media in the West.
Western reporters, especially those who are "parachuted" into the Middle East, would do well to remember that journalism in this region is not about being pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian. Rather, it is about being "pro" the truth, even when the truth runs straight up against what they would prefer to believe.
Khaled Abu Toameh is an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem.
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5)All of the candidates have baggage.
The author is the political correspondent for Bloomberg and wrote extensively about Obama even before he was elected and he did it with facts and more facts.
"Who is Donald Trump?" The better question may be, "What is Donald Trump?" The answer? A giant middle finger from average Americans to the political and media establishment.
Some Trump supporters are like the 60s white girls who dated black guys just to annoy their parents. But most Trump supporters have simply had it with the Demo-socialists and the "Republicans In Name Only." They know there isn't a dime's worth of difference between Hillary Rodham and Jeb Bush, and only a few cents worth between Rodham and the other GOP candidates.
Ben Carson is not an "establishment" candidate, but the Clinton machine would pulverize Carson; and the somewhat rebellious Ted Cruz will (justifiably so) be tied up with natural born citizen lawsuits (as might Marco Rubio). The Trump supporters figure they may as well have some fun tossing Molotov cocktails at Wall Street and Georgetown while they watch the nation collapse. Besides - lightning might strike, Trump might get elected, and he might actually fix a few things. Stranger things have happened (the nation elected an[islamo-]Marxist in 2008 and Bruce Jenner now wears designer dresses.)
Millions of conservatives are justifiably furious. They gave the Republicans control of the House in 2010 and control of the Senate in 2014, and have seen them govern no differently than Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Yet those same voters are supposed to trust the GOP in 2016? Why?
Trump did not come from out of nowhere. His candidacy was created by the last six years of Republican failures.
No reasonable person can believe that any of the establishment candidates [dems or reps] will slash federal spending, rein in the Federal Reserve, cut burdensome business regulations, reform the tax code, or eliminate useless federal departments (the Departments of Education, Housing and Urban Development, Energy, etc.). Even Ronald Reagan was unable to eliminate the Department of Education. (Of course, getting shot at tends to make a person less of a risk-taker.) No reasonable person can believe that any of the nation's major problems will be solved by Rodham, Bush, and the other dishers of donkey fazoo now eagerly eating corn in Iowa and pancakes in New Hampshire.
Many Americans, and especially Trump supporters, have had it with:
· Anyone named Bush
· Anyone named Clinton
· Anyone who's held political office
· Political correctness
· Illegal immigration
· Massive unemployment
· Phony "official" unemployment and inflation figures
· Welfare waste and fraud
· People faking disabilities to go on the dole
· VA waiting lists
· TSA airport groping
· ObamaCare
· The Federal Reserve's money-printing schemes
· Wall Street crooks like Jon Corzine
· Michelle Obama's vacations
· Michelle Obama's food police
· Barack Obama's golf
· Barack Obama's arrogant and condescending lectures
· Barack Obama's criticism/hatred of America
· Valerie Jarrett
· "Holiday trees"
· Hollywood hypocrites
· Global warming nonsense
· Cop killers
· Gun confiscation threats
· Stagnant wages
· Boys in girls' bathrooms
· Whiny, spoiled college students who can't even place the Civil War in the correct century... and that's just the short list.
Trump supporters believe that no Democrat wants to address these issues, and that few Republicans have the courage to address these issues. They certainly know that none of the establishment candidates are better than barely listening to them, and Trump is their way of saying, "Screw you, Hillary Rodham Rove Bush!" The more the talking head political pundits insult the Trump supporters, the more supporters he gains. (The only pundits who seem to understand what is going on are Democrats Doug Schoen and Pat Caddell and Republican John LeBoutillier. All the others argue that the voters will eventually "come to their senses" and support an establishment candidate.)
But America does not need a tune-up at the same old garage. It needs a new engine installed by experts - and neither Rodham nor Bush are mechanics with the skills or experience to install it. Hillary Rodham is not a mechanic; she merely manages a garage her philandering husband abandoned. Jeb Bush is not a mechanic; he merely inherited a garage. Granted, Trump is also not a mechanic, but he knows where to find the best ones to work in his garage. He won't hire his brother-in-law or someone to whom he owes a favor; he will hire someone who lives and breathes cars.
"How dare they revolt!" the "elites" are bellowing. Well, the citizens are daring to revolt, and the RINOs had better get used to it. "But Trump will hand the election to Clinton!" That is what the Karl Rove-types want people to believe, just as the leftist media eagerly shoved "Maverick" McCain down GOP throats in 2008 - knowing he would lose to Obama. But even if Trump loses and Rodham wins, she would not be dramatically different than Bush or most of his fellow candidates. They would be nothing more than caretakers, not working to restore America's greatness but merely presiding over the collapse of a massively in-debt nation. A nation can perhaps survive open borders; a nation can perhaps survive a generous welfare system. But no nation can survive both - and there is little evidence that the establishment candidates of either party understand that. The United States cannot forever continue on the path it is on. At some point it will be destroyed by its debt.
Yes, Trump speaks like a bull wander[ing] through a china shop, but the truth is that the borders do need to be sealed; we cannot afford to feed, house, and clothe 200,000 Syrian immigrants for decades (even if we get inordinately lucky and none of them are ISIS infiltrators or Syed Farook wannabes); the world is at war with radical Islamists; all the world's glaciers are not melting; and Rosie O'Donnell is a fat pig.
Is Trump the perfect candidate? Of course not. Neither was Ronald Reagan. But unless we close our borders and restrict immigration, all the other issues are irrelevant. One terrorist blowing up a bridge or a tunnel could kill thousands. One jihadist poisoning a city's water supply could kill tens of thousands. One electromagnetic pulse attack from a single Iranian nuclear device could kill tens of millions. Faced with those possibilities, most Americans probably don't care that Trump relied on eminent domain to grab up a final quarter acre of property for a hotel, or that he boils the blood of the Muslim Brotherhood thugs running the Council on American-Islamic Relations. While Attorney General Loretta Lynch's greatest fear is someone giving a Muslim a dirty look, most Americans are more worried about being gunned down at a shopping mall by a crazed [islamic] lunatic who treats his prayer mat better than his three wives and who thinks 72 virgins are waiting for him in paradise.
The establishment is frightened to death that Trump will win, but not because they believe he will harm the nation. They are afraid he will upset their taxpayer-subsidized apple carts. While Obama threatens to veto legislation that spends too little, they worry that Trump will veto legislation that spends too much.
You can be certain that if an establishment candidate wins in November 2016, … [their] cabinet positions will be filled with the same people we've seen before. The washed-up has-beens of the Clinton and Bush administrations will be back in charge. The hacks from Goldman Sachs will continue to call the shots. Whether it is Bush's Karl Rove or Clinton's John Podesta, who makes the decisions in the White House will matter little. If the establishment wins, America loses.
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