Perhaps Romney is hoping for a brokered convention allowing himself to be the person to whom the party turns.
Should Hillarious be the Demwit's anointed, there is enough in the way she will have been nominated to turn off those who supported Bernie because the fix was always in, whereas, certainly should Trump become the Repub's nominee it was due to a hard fought slug fest.
Then we have Hillarious' likability problems, her questionable methods of raising money from the same crowd she is now attacking all to support a foundation devoted to them and sustaining their life style.
Finally, we get to the matter of her utter disregard for American secrets and how she placed her own personal desires above national security and I have yet to mention Ben Ghazi, the sale of uranium to our adversaries, her dismal performance as Secretary of State beyond logging a lot of air miles and claiming to duck bullets upon landing and the list is as wide and deep as Moon River down the road from where I live. For sure she is not America's "Huckleberry Friend."
I have no doubt, Trump will get around to doing a hatchet job on her and probably will extend it to "Ole" Bill whose current energy level seems below that of JEB's. Bill may have been a Lothario but he was a brilliant politician, had sex appeal and women, in general, seemed enthralled and wanting to jump in bed with him.
Where all these candidates will take us is anyone's guess. We will either end disgusted and/or bewildered by the time the election has flushed up our next leader. For sure our campaigns last too long and cost too much considering the caliber of who are our choices.
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Next year's SIRC President's Day Speaker, Elliot Abrams, discusses the plight of Egypt's Christians . (See 1 below.)
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Justice Thomas, the Jurist I always thought he was and my disgust at how he was treated by Demwit Hypocrites is also reconfirmed. (See 2 below.)
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Confirmation that Ross was right about U.S and Israeli co-operation at highest levels of security and intelligence. (See 3 below.)
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Then we have this from the Brits. (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1)The status of Egypt's Christians
By Elliot Abrams
Elliott Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. This piece is reprinted with permission and can be found on Abrams' blog "Pressure Points."
There are a lot of fans of Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi nowadays in Washington who argue that he is fighting terrorism and deserves American support.
Those fans ought to be aware of the ongoing persecution of Christians, which el-Sissi could act strongly to prevent -- but does not. A very good example is the case of four Christian teenagers who have just been convicted under Egypt's "blasphemy" laws -- and sentenced to five years in prison, the maximum penalty.
Their crime? They made a 30-second video, never meant to become public, mocking ISIS. The video satirizes a group saying (Muslim) prayers and then going off to behead people -- and was made soon after ISIS beheaded a group of Copts. The full details are available at a good summaryarticle published by the Atlantic Council. Apparently the video was taken to be an insult to Islam, and rioting and destruction of Christian property and homes followed. No one was ever punished for those crimes, of course.
In fact, blasphemy laws are in Egypt as elsewhere used mostly against Christians. The daily insults of Christianity, mocking Christian beliefs and calling Christians "infidels" continue in Egypt. It is possible for el-Sissi to tell the prosecutor general to appeal these sentences, or to pardon these four teens himself. That is exactly what supporters of el-Sissi in Congress and the Obama administration should be asking him to do. And if he will not, they ought to be asking themselves what kind of Egypt he is creating, and why we want to support him in those efforts.
From "Pressure Points" by Elliott Abrams. Reprinted with permission from the Council on Foreign Relations.
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2) Justice Thomas, Candle in the Darkness
I had never met Justice Clarence Thomas. The occasion for our meeting was a private ceremony at the United States Supreme Court last year. The ceremony honored a scholar of law and leader in his profession, who happened to be a friend of mine. There were perhaps eight in his office. We stayed for nearly an hour, after which he met with a room of young scholars. That day, I got a shock.
To me, having been a U.S. Court of Appeals clerk for a Reagan appointee and admirer of Justice Scalia, I imagined -- I am not sure what I imagined. My preconceptions of Justice Thomas gave me to think he was humble and self-effacing, but naturally a man of few words. Every indication from the bench reaffirmed this. While Justice Scalia regularly demonstrated his saber wit, infinite and ironic humor, knack for incisive questions, and indefinite recall of legal precedent, my expectations of Justice Thomas were different.
Too well, I recalled the extraordinary unfairness visited on him during confirmation hearings, a scalding experience for all who watched. They still dragged my heart down, almost 25 years later. They had been a travesty, a secular crusade to undermine a good man’s integrity -- turning first this way, then that, anything to prevent America’s first Black conservative jurist from taking a seat on the High Court.
This travesty, ironically enough, was led by two senators who espoused an interest in juridical thinking and egalitarian principles -- but hardly treated their distinguished nominee with the respect due his depth, training and record. The two accusatory senators were Joseph Biden and Ted Kennedy. The memory of that painful process quieted me every time I thought about it. I imagined it left scars on the justice, a man who already kept his own counsel. No wonder he requested appellants exhaust their reasoning in written briefs, and he asked few questions from the bench.
As I sat there in Justice Thomas’ chambers, I knew that questions from the bench -- by any justice -- had been rare prior to Justice Scalia’s appointment in 1986. At that time, a sudden shift occurred. Justice Scalia evinced a willingness to mix it up, verbally and intellectually jousting with contenders for his concurrence. He was willing to shake and uncap the bottle, testing the reasoning of appellate litigants, probing their nimbleness of mind, depth of knowledge and application of case law. Scalia brought life to the court’s oral arguments. By contrast, Justice Thomas was -- like many before him -- a listener who avoided verbal duals, demurred to briefs.
Naturally, that is what I expected -- a quiet, listening justice, a man of few words, counsel closely kept. That is not what I encountered. Not at all. From the get-go, Justice Thomas was a tour-de-force, opening with boundless energy, Scalia-like wit, and a deep reservoir of good humor. He was crisp, alive to each question and comment, focused on the background of everyone in the room, deferential and quick to extend the thread, and surprising in another way.
Asked about a wide range of cases, crossing many and obscure areas, he took us on the adventure of a lifetime, case by case, in some instances winding back through the detailed common law and the origins of our rights, back to the Magna Carta. His mental flexibility, verbal fluidity and depth of knowledge on how, when, in what sequence, by what historical forces, and why our Constitutional rights holds us together was powerful, even spellbinding. I had not expected anything like this.
Mentally, I struggled to keep up with him, scrambling to follow complex fact patterns and clever comparisons, logical explanations for controversial cases, interlocking syllogisms and what these implied, important case connections, and an agility with philosophy, history, principle, and the distillate of our vast past. His grasp of our Constitution was rooted in mastery of case and statutory law, American and British history, and his frank ability to place each case -- without prejudice or revisionism -- in historical context. Forget narratives, he had facts. And he explained why meaning was imputed to the facts.
Clearly, this was a thinker whose still waters ran deep. His past, earliest days in poverty, raised by a strong mother and principled grandfather, gifted him with unusual insight, a thoughtful blend of patience and passion, inner peace and aspiration for the truth, doggedness, strength of character, and intergenerational perspective.
To see these qualities in a justice expected to be quiet was amazing. To understand that, along with Justice Scalia, Justice Alito, and flashes by others, there sat on the High Bench a mind profoundly grounded in historic understandings and timeless conservative principles, compelling in the way he graciously conveyed them to us, was a cool breeze on a stifling day, water in the desert. Behind those big closed doors, another powerful, compelling, conservative voice sounded.
To hear Justice Thomas answer hard questions, see him prod with proportion and kindness, hear him unpack and handle assumptions, watch his facility with historical reference points, was impressive. He shamed no one, accommodated everyone, but let nothing slip past. He educated without officiousness, enlightened with timely details and analogies, enlivened our little discussion with self-deprecating good humor. He was suddenly not the justice but one of us, helping us to see the light.
To cap his tour-de-force, he offered a playful exercise. In a second room, filled with perhaps 50 young scholars, he offered not only an open hand, mind and smile, but also a unique connection to their respective worlds. He asked many where they were from. Invariably, a given state would come back, and then he would ask where in the state, eventually working down to township or part of a given city. Then he would tell them how he knew that place, a general store across from the church, a gravel parking lot adjacent a specific intersection, something about their hometown. It was startling to the point of funny. Only it was real, since he travels the country and has for years, coast to coast, north to south, every summer. And why? To stay connected.
So what does this add to? Just this. This week, for the first time in almost 30 years, justices of the United State Supreme Court heard arguments without the great jurist, Justice Antonin Scalia. His loss is palpable to everyone who follows the Court, but it must be profound to those who knew the man. For thirty years, he asked those penetrating, incisive, probing and humorous questions.
No one can replace Justice Scalia, as justice, jurist, or man. But he did set an example, the example of mixing it up, stirring appellate litigants to think on their feet, asking them questions -- some simple, some layered -- which live on. And by odd coincidence, this week, his good colleague and no doubt decades-long friend, Justice Thomas, asked his first open court question -- a constitutionally focused inquiry -- in many years.
As a common citizen, with no interest or case before the High Court, that fact made me look up, suddenly happy. I know the extraordinary power of Justice Thomas’ uncommon mind and extraordinary command of case law, statutory law, their nexus and context. I have seen his reverence for our Constitution and for the people he serves.
So, I hope this is the beginning of a new chapter. I hope that he may consider offering more probing questions now, no doubt on the unspoken encouragement of his friend’s absence. Perhaps his banner may more fully unfurl, his light shine more brightly. We could use that sort of wisdom in the open court these days. The bible says, “Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick. And it giveth light unto all that are in the House.” The High Court is a big house, but if there was ever a time for more light in that house, it is now. Thank you, Justice Thomas.
Robert Charles is a former U.S. Court of Appeals clerk, litigator, instructor at Harvard University extension school in law and congressional oversight, and former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell.
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3)Top US Generals Discuss Cooperation With Israel
Barbara Opall-RomeTEL AVIV — US Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford and Air Force Gen. Philip
Breedlove held high-level talks in Israel on Thursday, meeting with Defense
Minister Moshe Ya'alon and senior security officials on plans to further
strategic cooperation in the face of chronic regional instability.
Among topics of discussion, sources in Israel said, were ways in which both
countries are coordinating deconfliction protocols with Russian forces
waging war beyond Israel’s northern border on behalf of Syrian President
Bashar Assad; the role of Turkey in the region; and Israel’s requirements as
it works to conclude a new 10-year military aid package with Washington.
Security talks held in Israel will be followed by a visit next week by US
Vice President Joe Biden, hosted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu.
In his second visit here in less than five months, Dunford, chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he is committed to strengthening
military-to-military ties, which he recognizes is just one aspect of the
ties that bind the two nations.
Turning to Breedlove, commander of US European Command (EUCOM), which is
responsible for Israel, Dunford noted that EUCOM works daily to hone
strategic cooperation with its Israeli partners.
“Gen. Breedlove works it every day; and I’m committed to building on his
efforts,” Dunford told Ya’alon.
Earlier in the day, the two generals visited US and Israeli military
personnel participating in the closing session of the joint Juniper Cobra
air defense exercise, followed by professional talks hosted by Lt. Gen. Gadi
Eisenkott, Israel Defense Forces chief of staff.
During a high-level working meeting Thursday afternoon, Ya’alon told
American officials he welcomed the opportunity to discuss cooperative ways
of addressing myriad regional challenges.
“Looking around at the Mideast together, with instability in the region, we
see many challenges ahead of us. I’m glad for another opportunity to discuss
the developing situation,” Ya'alon said.
To which Dunford replied: “We do have a lot of issues. And the thing that
gives me confidence that we can deal with these challenges is the fact that
we’re partners and allies.”
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4) From JOHN CLEESE
4) From JOHN CLEESE
The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent events in Syria and have therefore raised their security level from "Miffed" to "Peeved." Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to "Irritated" or even "A Bit Cross." The English have not been "A Bit Cross" since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies nearly ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorized from "Tiresome" to "A Bloody Nuisance." The last time the British issued a "Bloody Nuisance" warning level was in 1588, when threatened by the Spanish Armada.
The Scots have raised their threat level from "Pissed Off" to "Let's get the Bastards." They don't have any other levels. This is the reason they have been used on the front line of the British army for the last 300 years.
The French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from "Run" to "Hide." The only two higher levels in France are "Collaborate" and "Surrender." The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France 's white flag factory, effectively paralyzing the country's military capability.
Italy has increased the alert level from "Shout Loudly and Excitedly" to "Elaborate Military Posturing." Two more levels remain: "Ineffective Combat Operations" and "Change Sides."
The Germans have increased their alert state from "Disdainful Arrogance" to "Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs." They also have two higher levels: "Invade a Neighbour" and "Lose."
Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual; the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels ..
The Spanish are all excited to see their new submarines ready to deploy. These beautifully designed subs have glass bottoms so the new Spanish navy can get a really good look at the old Spanish navy.
Australia, meanwhile, has raised its security level from "No worries" to "She'll be right, Mate." Two more escalation levels remain: "Crikey! I think we'll need to cancel the barbie this weekend!" and "The barbie is cancelled." So far no situation has ever warranted use of the last final escalation level.
Regards,
John Cleese,
British writer, actor and tall person
John Cleese,
British writer, actor and tall person
And as a final thought - Greece is collapsing, the Iranians are getting aggressive, and Rome is in disarray. Welcome back to 430 BC. Life is too short...
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