Blake loved getting dressed in
Dagny's clothes until Lynn got
got him this outfit.
Obama keeps wedge issues going so he can insure
America remains divided and in turmoil.
(See 1 below.)
=======================================================================
Just about everything Obama says and does.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Even Dennis Ross has finally turned against Obama's policies. Ross hung around Obama until a light bulb finally went off in his head but by then it was too late. (See 2 below.)
===
Sowell discusses our grim choices.
Obama's extremism has helped to breed the extreme choices we have chosen.
Obama is an expert at ignoring his own despicable actions and using them as a lesson of what not to be like and/or do in his speeches. His ability to lie with a straight and serious face is amazing and an indication, to me, of a split and sick personality.(See 3 and 3a below.)
This is an article my closest Marine friend sent about how Democrats have changed.. (See 3b below.)
===
Bernie and Venezuela. Is there a lesson to be learned? Not for the young and progressives. They are too headstrong and blind to reality.
Pipe dreams are real until they explode, as they always do. (See 4 below.)
===
The Obama State Department to Iran - "Hush Little Baby." (See 5 below.)
===
I was on the Board of The Wilson Center for a while. (See 6 below.)
===
Jonathan Keiler agrees with what I have been saying for years. (See 7 below.)
===
Before Obama leaves office, and as he gets involved in the campaign, I believe he will do whatever he can to foment more discord. I also believe if Trump is successful in linking Hillary to four more years of Obama then Obama's remaining time in office in addition to her own FBI issues could sink her boat.
===
Dick
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1)Obama’s Transgender ‘Guidance’
The White House starts another culture war to drive liberal turnout.
Departments of Justice and Education to every public school district in the country, is not
the first time the Obama Administration has swept American institutions under its
administrative control.
In April 2011 Education, backed by Justice, sent every institution of higher learning what
has come to be known in academia as the “Dear Colleague” letter. They don’t mean that
in a friendly way. That 19-page letter described how the feds wanted every college and
university to comply with the Administration’s expanding definition of Title IX
requirements on sexual harassment. The letter wasn’t a law or even a regulation. It was
described as “guidance.” As the nation’s public schools learned Friday, this gives
“guidance” new meaning.
PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
That meaning is that the Obama Administration intends to obliterate
what is left of federalism, the
principle that states retain powers not delegated to the national government.
How else can one interpret Friday’s “guidance” on bathrooms, locker
rooms and sports teams to public
grade schools and high schools, long considered a symbol of local control?
The Administration’s letter to its
“colleagues” in the nation’s public
schools brings to mind Little Red
Riding Hood, standing innocently before the large, smiling figure in granny clothes,
except for the disconcertingly big, sharp teeth. The Obama teeth emerge on page two of
the Education Department’s letter: “As a condition of receiving Federal funds . . .” Yes,
unless the schools “treat a student’s gender identity as the student’s sex for the purposes of Title IX,” the school district may lose federal funds.
This is Washington calling in its side of the Faustian bargain states and cities struck years
ago to get federal revenues flowing to local needs. Now the Obama regulators are
showing up to tell these governments that it’s time to hand over control of your public
schools as well. Some are resisting.
Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick has raised the possibility that his state may forfeit its
$10 billion of annual federal funding for its schools. We hope Texas follows through and
is joined by other states. There is more at stake here than sexual identity, not least the
self-identity of the United States.
The Obama Administration’s preoccupation with sex, whether in sophomore year or the
fourth grade, raises questions about whether the federal bureaucracies know at all what
they are doing on anything resembling the merits. The 2011 letter on sexual harassment
waved into existence a long list of compliance measures that schools had to institute,
including novel procedures for handling accusers and the accused. This has led to
serious complaints that traditional due process is disappearing on campus.
The new rules on transgender students push further into unknown territory. The Friday
“Dear Colleague” letter posits that a student’s personal declaration of sexual gender, or
what the letter calls “an individual’s internal sense of gender,” must be accepted without challenge.
Two years ago on these pages we published “Transgender Surgery Isn’t the Solution” by
Johns Hopkins psychiatrist Paul McHugh. In one of the most widely read pieces we
have published, Dr. McHugh pointed out that the idea of gender as subjective “personal
truth” has no basis in science. What studies have been done on gender preference also
suggest that the belief that these choices result in positive psychological outcomes isn’t
proven—especially for students in grade school.
Suddenly, though, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch has solved the mysteries of
gender confusion—for the whole country.
We made this argument on abortion and gay marriage and will do so again to the
transgender activists: Let the states decide. Texas and Arizona are opposed to coerced
bathroom choice, while Oregon is already there. Oregon’s Education Department on May
5 sent its schools recommendations on pronoun preferences (legal first name versus
preferred first name), locker rooms and unisex changing spaces. If this makes Oregonians happier, so be it.
This being a presidential election year, we’ll indulge some cynicism about this sudden
invention of national grade-school transgender rights. The Obama White House will rub
whatever raw political nerves it takes to kick up a culture clash in order to mobilize the
Obama election coalition for Hillary Clinton’s flagging campaign. That Friday’s “Dear Colleague” letter on transgender students will launch years of litigation and release
political furies in school districts across America is the main point.
The progressive goal is: We win, you comply.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
2) Why Middle Eastern Leaders Are Talking to Putin, Not Obama
Russia’s less dominant militarily but more willing to act, and that has changed the dynamics in the region.
By Dennis Ross
The United States has significantly more military capability in the Middle East today than Russia—America has 35,000 troops and hundreds of aircraft; the Russians roughly 2,000 troops and, perhaps, 50 aircraft—and yet Middle Eastern leaders are making pilgrimages to Moscow to see Vladimir Putin these days, not rushing to Washington. Two weeks ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to see the Russian president, his second trip to Russia since last fall, and King Salman of Saudi Arabia is planning a trip soon. Egypt’s president and other Middle Eastern leaders have also made the trek to see Putin.
Why is this happening, and why on my trips to the region am I hearing that Arabs and Israelis have pretty much given up on President Barack Obama? Because perceptions matter more than mere power: The Russians are seen as willing to use power to affect the balance of power in the region, and we are not.
Putin’s decision to intervene militarily in Syria has secured President Bashar Assad’s position and dramatically reduced the isolation imposed on Russia after the seizure of Crimea and its continuing manipulation of the fighting in Ukraine. And Putin’s worldview is completely at odds with Obama’s. Obama believes in the use of force only in circumstances where our security and homeland might be directly threatened. His mindset justifies pre-emptive action against terrorists and doing more to fight the Islamic State. But it frames U.S. interests and the use of force to support them in very narrow terms. It reflects the president’s reading of the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan, and helps to explain why he has been so reluctant to do more in Syria at a time when the war has produced a humanitarian catastrophe, a refugee crisis that threatens the underpinnings of the European Union, and helped to give rise to Islamic State. And, it also explains why he thinks that Putin cannot gain—and is losing—as a result of his military intervention in Syria.
But in the Middle East it is Putin’s views on the uses of coercion, including force to achieve political objectives, that appears to be the norm, not the exception—and that is true for our friends as well as adversaries. The Saudis acted in Yemen in no small part because they feared the United States would impose no limits on Iranian expansion in the area, and they felt the need to draw their own lines. In the aftermath of the nuclear deal, Iran’s behavior in the region has been more aggressive, not less so, with regular Iranian forces joining the Revolutionary Guard now deployed to Syria, wider use of Shiite militias, arms smuggling into Bahrain and the eastern province of Saudi Arabia, and ballistic missile tests.
Russia’s presence has not helped. The Russian military intervention turned the tide in Syria and, contrary to Obama’s view, has put the Russians in a stronger position without imposing any meaningful costs on them. Not only are they not being penalized for their Syrian intervention, but the president himself is now calling Vladimir Putin and seeking his help to pressure Assad—effectively recognizing who has leverage.Middle Eastern leaders recognize it as well and realize they need to be talking to the Russians if they are to safeguard their interests. No doubt, it would be better if the rest of the world defined the nature of power the way Obama does. It would be better if, internationally, Putin were seen to be losing. But he is not.
This does not mean that we are weak and Russia is strong. Objectively, Russia is declining economically and low oil prices spell increasing financial troubles—a fact that may explain, at least in part, Putin’s desire to play up Russia’s role on the world stage and his exercise of power in the Middle East. But Obama’s recent trip to Saudi Arabia did not alter the perception of American weakness and our reluctance to affect the balance of power in the region. The Arab Gulf states fear growing Iranian strength more than they fear the Islamic State—and they are convinced that the administration is ready to acquiesce in Iran’s pursuit of regional hegemony. Immediately after the president’s meeting at the Gulf Cooperation Council summit, Abdulrahman al-Rashed, a journalist very well connected to Saudi leaders, wrote: “Washington cannot open up doors to Iran allowing it to threaten regional countries … while asking the afflicted countries to settle silently.”
As I hear on my visits to the region, Arabs and Israelis alike are looking to the next administration. They know the Russians are not a force for stability; they count on the United States to play that role. Ironically, because Obama has conveyed a reluctance to exercise American power in the region, many of our traditional partners in the area realize they may have to do more themselves. That’s not necessarily a bad thing unless it drives them to act in ways that might be counterproductive. For example, had the Saudis been more confident about our readiness to counter the Iranian-backed threats in the region, would they have chosen to go to war in Yemen—a costly war that not surprisingly is very difficult to win and that has imposed a terrible price? Obama has been right to believe that the regional parties must play a larger role in fighting the Islamic State. He has, unfortunately, been wrong to believe they would do so if they thought we failed to see the bigger threat they saw and they doubted our credibility.
Indeed, so long as they question American reliability, there will be limits to how much they will expose themselves—whether in fighting the Islamic State, not responding to Russian entreaties, or even thinking about assuming a role of greater responsibility for Palestinian compromises on making peace with Israel. To take advantage of their recognition that they may need to run more risks and assume more responsibility in the region, they will want to know that America’s word is good and there will be no more “red lines” declared but unfulfilled; that we see the same threats they do; and that U.S. leaders understand that power affects the landscape in the region and will not hesitate to reassert it.
Several steps would help convey such an impression:
⧫ Toughen our declaratory policy toward Iran about the consequences of cheating on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to include blunt, explicit language on employing force, not sanctions, should the Iranians violate their commitment not to pursue or acquire a nuclear weapon;
⧫ Launch contingency planning with GCC states and Israel—who themselves are now talking—to generate specific options for countering Iran’s growing use of Shiite militias to undermine regimes in the region. (A readiness to host quiet three-way discussions with Arab and Israeli military planners would signal we recognize the shared threat perceptions, the new strategic realities, and the potentially new means to counter both radical Shiite and Sunni threats.)
⧫ Be prepared to arm the Sunni tribes in Iraq if Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi continues to be blocked from doing so by the Iranians and the leading militias;
⧫ In Syria, make clear that if the Russians continue to back Assad and do not force him to accept the Vienna principles (a cease-fire, opening humanitarian corridors, negotiations and a political transition), they will leave us no choice but to work with our partners to develop safe havens with no-fly zones.
Putin and Middle Eastern leaders understand the logic of coercion. It is time for us to reapply it.
Ambassador Dennis Ross is a long-time U.S. Mideast negotiator and author of Doomed to Succeed: The US-Israeli relationship from Truman to Obama.http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/putin-obama-middle-east-leaders-213867#ixzz48HtS4riR
Dennis Ross was heavily invested in the Middle East "peace process" for more than a decade working under Secretaries of State Baker, Christopher and Albright, also served as a special assistant to President Obama during the first three years of Obama's presidency. It is noteworthy that even Dennis Ross has now concluded that U.S. Mideast policy has changed the regional dynamics for the worse and that the increased the influence of Russia - and of Iran - is directly attributable to the administration's policy
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
3) GRIM CHOICES
By Thomas Sowell
We must frankly face the fact that the front runners in both political parties represent a new low, at a time of domestic polarization and unprecedented nuclear dangers internationally. This year's general election will offer a choice between a thoroughly corrupt liar and an utterly irresponsible egomaniac.
The Republican establishment, whose serial betrayals of their supporters created the setting for a Donald Trump to arise, must now decide how best to deal with the apparent inevitability of his candidacy.
Choosing among various unpalatable options may require some tricky maneuvering on their part, but they have been used to tricky maneuvering before, which is how they find themselves in this predicament in the first place.
Apparently some Republican leaders have opted to try to make the best of a bad situation by creating at least the illusion of party "unity" going into this year's elections. But the toxic image of Donald Trump can follow the Republicans repeatedly in future elections.
The careers of young Republicans are especially at risk of acquiring an indelible stain by being associated with Trump, much as Marco Rubio may never live down his association with Senator Chuck Schumer's attempt to create bipartisan amnesty.
The smart money says that, when all is said and done, Republican voters are going to have to vote for Trump. If they stay home, that is the same as voting for Hillary Clinton.
As former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich put it, Hillary Clinton in the White House means a Supreme Court packed with justices who will undermine the Constitution for decades to come. He has a point -- but not necessarily a decisive point.
If a man in his sixties has not yet matured, he is unlikely to grow up in his seventies. This is not a question about whether Donald Trump is as evil as Hillary Clinton. He may well be the proverbial "lesser of the two evils" in that sense, and yet be the more dangerous President to have in the White House.
Some have argued that a President Trump could surround himself with experienced and savvy advisers to cover for his own shallow understanding of many national and international issues. But Barack Obama has already shown us that a headstrong egomaniac can ignore even unanimous advice from military advisers. That is how he pulled troops out of Iraq and set the stage for ISIS.
Those of us who are far more concerned about the fate of this country than about the fate of the Republican party face far tougher questions than how to get through this year's election.
Some people are said to be thinking about a third-party candidate. Desperate times may call for desperate measures. But if such a desperate choice is made, a third party has virtually no chance of electing its candidate.
The most a third party could hope for would be to take enough votes from both Democrats and Republicans to deny either party's candidate a victory in the Electoral College. That would throw the election of the President of the United States into the House of Representatives.
No one knows who would then become President. But it would be hard to find someone worse than either Hillary or Trump.
The very fact that we are left with such desperate options is not only a rebuke to the professional politicians, but also a painful revelation about the voting public.
Immediately after electing a President with virtually no track record, on the basis of rhetoric and symbolism, and seeing disaster after disaster during his administration, many are now prepared to do the same thing all over again.
More than two centuries ago, Thomas Jefferson said, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." If so, can people who cannot be bothered to look up from their electronic devices expect to remain a free people?
3a)Trump is the wind that Obama’s JV presidency hath sown
-
3b) "Dick,
3a)Trump is the wind that Obama’s JV presidency hath sown
-
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
A rare point of universal agreement in all this trenchant political acrimony: No matter what you think of Donald Trump, the political environment in which the flashy real estate mogul has so brilliantly thrived was created entirely by President Obama.
This explains the president’s truly bizarre performance during his graduation speech Sunday. The president is angry, he is defensive, he is spending his final months in office hopelessly trying to spin his failed presidency.
“In politics and in life, ignorance is not a virtue,” he said in a speech that was otherwise peppered with obvious references to Mr. Trump, who is already basically running against Mr. Obama’s third term, whoever the Democratic nominee will be.
“It’s not cool to not know what you are talking about,” he told the easy crowd. “That’s not keeping it real or telling it like it is, that’s not challenging political correctness. That’s just not knowing what you’re talking about.”
I’m sorry, what is the president talking about? His policy in Libya? His handling of the “JV” team that makes up the Islamic State terrorist group today? His cowardly mishandling of race relations in America? Or is he talking about his disastrously failed health care program? His hollow border policy that has — literally — killed innocent American citizens?
3b) "Dick,
How the Democrats Have Changed
What you sent is true. Obama is no JFK. (Hell, JFK was no JFK--he waffled
w/the Soviets until our backs were to the wall, then suddenly seemed to grow
some cojones. Khruschev then made the calculation that US nuclear
superiority of at least 4x was a very bad correlation of forces to mess with
& backed down--but he still got JFK to make some concessions!)
But you're right. The Dems have changed so that to them, it doesn't seem odd
at all that their two candidates for prez are an old Bolshevik & an
over-age-in-grade socialist retread from the '60s. Here's my personal
opinion (from my research) of what's happened to the Dems--the commies moved
them & the entire US to the left:
In 2008, the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA), departing from its previous
low-key backing, openly endorsed Obama for President. But by 2012, obviously
emboldened by Obama’s first term, the CPUSA became urgent and outspoken in
its call for Obama’s re-election. The CPUSA clearly saw no downside in
loudly and publicly exhorting American communists to vote for a candidate
they viewed as one of their own!
Obviously, the broader electorate had all but forgotten, or no longer cares,
that the CPUSA was once funded and directed from the Kremlin, headquarters
of the “Fatherland of Socialism” (during the Cold War, Reds in the US
eagerly listened to Radio Moscow for coded instructions). The pervasiveness
of self-declared socialists, communists and Islamists who occupy influential
positions in the US, including in the government, and their fealty to alien
ideologies, is one of many open secrets in Washington, DC, despite media
silence. Members of Congress also are aware of CPUSA support for Obama and
others and Congress does all Americans a disservice by suppressing that
information.
In modern America, the Congressional Progressive Caucus is the principal
federal-level legislative ally of a variety of international and domestic
communist and socialist organizations, such as the CPUSA, Socialist
International, International Socialist Congress, and the Democratic
Socialists of America. The Caucus boasts nearly eighty members, all of whom
are Democrats, except for an Independent or two. Current Progressive Caucus
co-chairs are radical Muslim Keith Ellison of Minnesota and Arizonan Raul
Grijalva. (This is no joke. These are communists and Islamists, aligned with
people the US fought in hot wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.)
The silent treatment of Obama’s radicalism by the media and Congress masks
another open secret—the pervasive influence of the radical Left on the whole
of Obama’s life. Obama’s mentor in his youth, Frank Marshall Davis, was a
card-carrying member of the CPUSA (reportedly, the card was # 44,757). Davis
was a propagandist who worked for communist front publications in Hawaii and
on the mainland. According to Obama’s autobiography, during Obama’s
formative years, Davis had Obama come to his home each afternoon after
school to be indoctrinated in Davis’ Marxist worldview. Obama’s
grandparents, who were members of the Red Church, a well-known Communist
front, set up their grandson’s indoctrination program with Davis, as
chronicled in Paul Kengor’s book, The Communist, Frank Marshall Davis-The
Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor. From Davis and other radicals of
Davis’ and his grandparents’ acquaintance, Obama learned the principles of
destroying jobs, increase dependency on welfare, defining success as the
number of people shifted from work to extended unemployment benefits, food
stamps, and disability compensation when unemployment payments expire (these
dependencies are now at record levels in our Republic). Those like Obama,
born into radicalism, are often referred to as “red-diaper babies” or
“hand-me-down Marxists,” because they follow in the far-left footsteps of
their parents. Many former leaders of the Students for a Democratic Society
(SDS) and Weather Underground, whom Obama counts as friends, were themselves
children of CPUSA members. These include Katherine Boudin, Jeff Jones, and
even David Axelrod, whose mother was a Red journalist.
Iran-born Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s principal and indispensable advisor,
comes from a long line of radicals with communist affiliations (especially
on her mother’s side), including communist front groups that counted Frank
Marshall Davis as a member. In Chicago, generations of Ayres were her family’s
neighbors, and the families shared professional and ideological
associations. Her husband, whom she married in 1983, also comes from a
family with deep communist roots, as well as senior leadership roles in the
CPUSA and links to Frank Marshall Davis. Ms. Jarrett became a confidante of
both Obamas in the early 1990s, when she recruited Michelle, who was then
engaged to Barack Obama, into Chicago political life. Not coincidentally,
Michelle’s parents had developed their own communist links.
It should surprise nobody that long before Barack Obama arrived at
Occidental College, already a committed Marxist revolutionary at age 18, his
radical outlook simply reflected the views of “all in the family,”
especially those of Frank Marshal Davis. Thereafter, Obama continued to
surround himself with people who shared his radical outlook. (Since there’s
at least an even chance that Davis was Barack Obama’s real father, Barack
Obama may literally be the “red diaper baby-in-chief” among radical friends
and family!)
In 1995, while campaigning for Illinois state senator, Obama was backed by
Chicago’s Marxist-led, socialist New Party (this is the party which
sponsored the infamous fundraiser in Bill Ayres’ living room, that David
Axelrod said never happened—but that Ayres confirmed had occurred.) The New
Party was founded in 1992, about the time communism was tanking in the
former Soviet Union. The party took advantage of so-called “electoral
fusion,” by which candidates could run simultaneously on two tickets,
attracting voters of both the Democratic Party and hard-core socialist New
Party; the New Party disbanded in 1998, a year after a US Supreme Court
decision halting the practice of “fusion.” The New Party sought to get its
members elected to public office in order to move the Democratic Party far
leftward, ultimately transforming it into a new, socialist political party
(ACORN, the radical organization long-associated with Obama, led
mobilization and voter drive efforts for the New Party; in turn, the New
Party was ACORN’s de facto political wing). The kluge with Democrats would
lend the explicitly socialist party political legitimacy, increasing its
prospects for gaining political power and burnishing its thoroughly
shop-worn socialist agenda.
The New Party was not just some rag-tag group of over-the-hill lefties, but
counted prominent communists, Marxists, Maoists, and even Trotskyites(!) on
its rolls. Many New Party founders were leaders of the Democratic Socialists
of America (DSA) and members of a Communist Party USA (CPUSA) splinter
faction calling itself the Committees of Correspondence (C of C).
Unrepentant Weatherman Underground bombthrowers Bernadine Dohrn and Bill
Ayres were C of C members, as was Marxist activist and New Party founder,
Carl Davidson. In 1995, the New Party organized a forum mustering 70 of the
party’s most committed, faithful activists to personally and publicly vet
progressive candidates, in order to validate their radical credentials for
voters.
New Party documents show that Obama was a party member and like other
prominent progressive candidates, Obama signed a “contract,” obligating him
to publicly support the New Party and associate himself with it while he was
in office. As a quid pro quo, the party would support him; thus, the New
Party endorsed Obama as a member!
It shouldn’t be surprising that few have heard about Obama’s membership in
the radical New Party, inspired by an alien, communist ideology, even though
at that time he was supposed to be representing the interests of Illinois
citizens. Not a whole lot of citizens noticed or cared. After all, America
had won the Cold War and communist ideology no longer had traction, even in
the Kremlin! What difference could Obama’s communist upbringing and radical
party membership possibly make?
However, fast forward to the second decade of the 21st Century. Obama’s
communist connections came out of the closet. In fact, Obama made “Forward!”
his 2012 campaign banner slogan (“Forward!”, or “Vpered!” in Russian, is
what Lenin called his revolutionary publication when he founded it in 1905;
“Vorwaerts!” was the equivalent for German Reds, such as Marx, Engels and
Trotsky). This should have been a clue to modern students of history. It’s a
word with a long, rich European Marxist association—a traditional
Marxist-Leninist exhortation representing the “march of history,” which true
believers assert inexorably progresses toward communism, according to
historical “laws” they alone understand. For Obama, “Forward!” reflected a
new, more “transparent” and nostalgia-evoking, close linkage with the
radical Left, ESPECIALLY fellow travelers in the CPUSA. “Forward!” in a
political context is so obviously a communist slogan (we’ve all seen the
heroic Stalinist-Realism statue of the revolutionary, rifle raised high,
exhorting his brothers-in-arms, “FORWARD!”), it is amazing Obama wasn’t
called out for being explicitly radical by fellow Democrats.
Regards,
Bob"
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
4) What’s Socialism, Dad?
Venezuela provides a lesson to anyone tempted to feel the Bern.
By Bret Stephens
Noah, my 10-year-old son, was reading over my shoulder a powerful story about the state of medicine in Venezuela by Nick Casey in Sunday’s New York Times. We scrolled through images of filthy operating rooms, broken incubators and desperate patients lying in pools of blood, dying for lack of such basics as antibiotics.
“Dad, why are the hospitals like this?”
“Socialism.”
“What’s socialism?”
I told him it’s an economic system in which the government seizes and runs industries, sets prices for goods, and otherwise dictates what you can and cannot do with your money, and therefore your life. He received my answer with the abstracted interest you’d expect if I had been describing atmospheric conditions on Uranus.
Here’s what I wish I had said: Socialism is a mental poison that leads to human misery of the sort you see in these wrenching pictures.
The lesson seems all the more necessary when discredited ideologies are finding new champions in high places. When Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez died in 2013, an obscure U.K. parliamentarian tweeted, “Thanks Hugo Chavez for showing that the poor matter and wealth can be shared. He made massive contributions to Venezuela & a very wide world.”
The parliamentarian was Jeremy Corbyn, now leader of the Labour Party.
Let’s not stop with Mr. Corbyn. In its day, Chavismo found champions, apologists and useful idiots among
influential political figures and supposed thought leaders. In Massachusetts there were Joseph P. Kennedy and Rep. Bill Delahunt, who arranged a propaganda coup for the strongman by agreeing to purchase discounted Venezuelan heating oil for U.S. consumers. The Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel extolled Chávez for defying the Bush administration and offering “an innovative four-point program to renew and reform the U.N.”
More Global View
- Hillary: The Conservative Hope May 9, 2016
- The GOP Gets What It Deserves May 2, 2016
- The Anti-Israel Money Trail April 25, 2016
- Merkel’s Road to Moral Surrender April 18, 2016
Up north, Naomi Klein, Canada’s second-most unpleasant export, treated Chávez as heroically leading the resistance to the forces of dreaded neoliberalism. Jimmy Carter mourned Chávez for “his bold assertion of autonomy and independence for Latin American governments and for his formidable communication skills and personal connection with supporters in his country and abroad to whom he gave hope and empowerment.”
There are lesser names to add to this roll call of dishonor— Michael Moore, Sean Penn—but you get the point: “Democratic socialism” had no shortage of prominent Western cheerleaders as it set Venezuela on its road to hyperinflation, hyper-criminality, water shortages, beer shortages, electricity blackouts, political repression and national collapse. Chávez and his successor, Nicolás Maduro, gained prestige and legitimacy from these paladins of the left. They are complicit in Venezuela’s agony.
And so to the U.S. election, specifically the resolutely undead presidential candidacy of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
The Sanders campaign is no stranger to accusations that its brand of leftism is cut from the same cloth that produced Chavismo.
“Yesterday, one of Hillary Clinton’s most prominent Super PACs attacked our campaign pretty viciously,” Mr. Sanders complained in September, noting that they “tried to link me to a dead communist dictator.”
The senator protests too much. As mayor of Burlington, Vt., in the 1980s, he boasted of conducting his own foreign policy, including sister-city relations with Puerto Cabezas in Nicaragua and Yaroslavl in the Soviet Union. On a 1985 trip to Nicaragua, he lavished praise on Daniel Ortega’s communist regime—Chavismo’s older cousin.
“In terms of health care, in terms of education, in terms of land reform . . . nobody denies they [the Sandinistas] are making significant progress in those areas,” then-Mayor Sanders told one interviewer in 1985. “And I think people understand that and I think the people of Nicaragua, the poor people, respect that.”
If Mr. Sanders ever rethought or recanted those views, I’m not aware of it.
But the point isn’t what Mr. Sanders may have thought of the Sandinistas in the 1980s or the Chavistas in the past decade. It’s that the type of socialism that the senator espouses—$18 trillion in additional government spending over the next decade, accusations that Wall Street is a criminal enterprise and the continuous demonization of “millionaires and billionaires”—is not all that different from its South American cousins.
Democratic socialism—whether Chavez’s or Sanders’s—is legalized theft in the name of the people against the vilified few. It is a battle against income inequality by means of collective immiseration. It is the subjugation of private enterprise and personal autonomy to government power. Mr. Sanders promises to pursue his aims on the Scandinavian model, as if that was a success,and as if Americans are Scandinavians. It wasn’t. We aren’t. Bernie’s Way paves the same road to serfdom that socialism does everywhere.
That’s a fact Americans might have learned after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. We didn’t. Take the time to tell your kids what socialism is, and does, before they too feel the Bern.
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+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++State Department declines to respondBY:A senior Iranian military commander claimed that U.S. officials are quietly encouraging the Islamic Republic to keep its illicit ballistic missile tests a secret so as not to raise concerns in the region, according to Persian language comments.Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Aerospace and Missile Force, said in recent remarks that the Obama administration does not want Iran to publicize its ongoing missile tests, which have raised questions about the Islamic Republic’s commitment to last summer’s comprehensive nuclear agreement.“At this time, the Americans are telling [us]: ‘Don’t talk about missile affairs, and if you conduct a test or maneuver, don’t mention it,’” Hajizadeh was quoted as saying during a recent Persian-language speech that was translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute.“If we agree to this, they will advance another step, and say: ‘Don’t conduct [a missile test] at this time, and also don’t do it in the Persian Gulf region.’ After that, they will tell us: ‘Why do you need your missiles to have a range of 2,000 km [anyway?]?’ Hajizadeh reportedly said.The military commander expressed concern that the United States will attempt to dissuade Iran from developing missile technology capable of carrying a nuclear payload.“After that, they will tell [us]: ‘Next, we will check whether your missiles can really carry nuclear weapons. Bring us the details [of the missiles].’ After that, they will say: ‘We need to set up cameras.’ And, finally, they will say: ‘Either saw [the missiles up into pieces] or, like [Libyan dictator Mu’ammar] Gadhafi, load them onto a ship and hand [them] over to us.’” he said.Hajizadeh further claimed that the United States “cannot be trusted.”Iran, he said, “must face them down firmly, and we must act. If we do not, we will witness daily their exaggerated and evil demands.”“They are clearly deluding themselves. Nothing like this will ever happen,” he added.A State Department official declined to comment on the remarks, telling the Washington Free Beacon that it is U.S. policy to avoid responding publicly to Iran.“We generally don’t comment on public remarks by Iranian officials, and especially IRGC officials,” the official told the Free Beacon. “We’re not going to start now.”
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Six Stubborn, Essential Middle East Truths
This piece was created in collaboration with the Woodrow Wilson Center. Aaron David Miller, a Vice President at the Woodrow Wilson Center, served as a Middle East negotiator, analyst and adviser in Republican and Democratic Administrations. The views expressed here are the author's own.
Leaders change, and the Middle East can always surprise. But regardless of presidential preference and promises, there are a half-dozen verities that will haunt any leader, from Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton -- just as they have bedeviled President Barack Obama and his predecessors.
Want Hollywood endings, go to the movies. I challenge anyone to identify a single issue in this region today that is heading toward a meaningful or sustainable end state. From Syria’s civil war to the politics of Iraq, from the war against the Islamic State to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we are dealing with problems that are much more likely to have outcomes than solutions.
Even the Obama’s administration’s signal foreign policy achievement -- the P5+1 Iranian nuclear agreement -- is an accord limited in time and scope that in no way assures Iran’s nuclear aspirations have been laid to rest, let alone guarantees the Islamic republic’s behavior in the region.
We need to stop thinking about fixing problems in the Middle East on what I call Administration Time -- four-to-eight-year increments -- and start thinking about a more extended metric, say a decade. Even the highly imperfect Iran nuclear agreement recognizes this reality.
Blame America, but blame the locals more. The United States has made many mistakes in the Middle East. The 2003 invasion of Iraq was a galactic blunder. It was followed by additional mistakes, such as American support for the repressive and corrupt government of Nouri al-Maliki, and its hasty military withdrawal from the country. But the lion’s share of the responsibility for the state of the broken, angry, and dysfunctional Middle East lies with the locals themselves.
There’s a reason this region seems impervious to positive, progressive change. The elements required to catalyze that change do not presently exist. Sparking such change will require leaders who are ready and able to rise above their narrow sectarian, political, or corporatist affiliations for the sake of their countries; effective and authoritative institutions; freedom of expression; gender equality, and so on. What exist instead are sectarian, regional rivalries overlaying weak and failing states to guarantee instability, and in some cases, fragmentation and chaos.
Doctrines are disastrous. Consistency, Emerson opined, is the hobgoblin of little minds. It is certainly of limited value to a great power operating in the Middle East. It can at times make sense to be consistent in what you say and intend when dealing with friends and adversaries. It is foolhardy, however, to force U.S. values, interests, and policies to fit a doctrinal straitjacket. We supported an Arab Spring in Egypt and Tunisia. Why did we not do the same in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain? We invaded and occupied Iraq with disastrous results, presumably to remove a bad regime. Now we have been there for more than a decade. Should we not have been compelled, then, to repeat the exercise in Libya and Syria? They also had bad leaders, so why not invade and occupy?
Great powers behave in anomalous and contradictory ways, driven sometimes by sheer hypocrisy, sometimes by domestic politics, and more often by what they deem to be their selective interests. And when it comes to the Middle East, it’s hard to see how American interests and values will ever strictly align.
Want a perfect friend? Get a dog. Unless the United States plans to go it alone in a region where it has vital interests, enormous challenges, and a lot of enemies, it’s going to have to make do with the friends that it has. And those friends are far from perfect. In some cases -- think of Saudi Arabia and Egypt -- Washington shares few values, particularly when it comes to democratic principles. But some interests nevertheless overlap.
In other cases, such as Israel, there is affinity on values and many shared interests. Even so, serious differences remain on issues such as Israeli settlements, the terms for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and recent American overtures to Iran -- particularly the merits of last year’s nuclear accord.
The odds of pushing these imperfect partners to see things the American way on issues that are dear to them are pretty slim. No matter how hard we insist, they have more at stake on these issues than we do. Good luck trying to impose a deal with the Palestinians on the Israelis, or telling the Egyptians or Saudis to democratize. We’re caught in an investment trap when it comes to these partners, especially as the Middle East melts down.
Don’t let rhetoric outstrip reality or capacity. Sadly, the United States has become adept at doing precisely that. Words are not actions, but they do count. And far too often Washington has not followed through on our words. America has said too much or not explained clearly enough what it’s trying to accomplish in the region.
Just look at Syria. Washington called repeatedly for the removal of Bashar al-Assad, and now seemingly accepts that he could be part of a prolonged transition. President Obama identified any regime use of chemical weapons as an unacceptable red line, not to be crossed; it was crossed. We called for ISIS’s destruction without any realistic hope of achieving that, and warned the Russians off supporting the Assad regime without the means to stop them. More recently, Secretary of State John Kerry talked about reaching the “critical hours” in a search for a cease-fire in Syria that appears interminable.
There are many things we cannot control. Our rhetoric, we can control.
Forget transforming the region. Transact and manage as best you can. Why the United States thinks it can impose its dreams and schemes on small tribes, where other great powers have failed, is not entirely clear. We cannot end Syria’s civil war or put Iraq back together. We cannot bring democracy to the Arab world, nor solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem. You need regional buy-in for all those things. And America lacks partners in this region who can undertake such transformative acts.
What Washington can do is focus on trying to keep America safe and prosperous: To the extent we can, hammer ISIS, al-Qaeda affiliates, and other jihadists who want to attack the United States and our allies; continue to wean America off Arab hydrocarbons and in the interim ensure no disruption in Middle East supply; and work to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
It’s not pretty, perfect, or heroic. But it’s eminently sensible and smart in a region America can neither fix nor leave.
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7) Trump Should Abolish the Department of Education
As with many things, Donald Trump’s position on education policy is less than entirely clear. On the other hand,
President Obama is not only intent on using the Department of Education to politically indoctrinate future generations, but as a tool to transform American social mores, morality, and values, most especially through recent directives requiring public schools receiving federal funds (which is all of them) to allow transgender students to use whatever bathroom they desire at the moment. These federal directives, along with nearly identical moves requiring coverage for transsexual reassignment under the Affordable Care Act represent an opportunity for Trump. Trump has an official position calling for repeal of ObamaCare (despite flirting with national healthcare at other points in his career) but not on education. In the wake of Obama’s moves, he should officially call for the abolition of the Department of Education, which would reinforce his populist message, while at the same time giving conservatives some reassurance that he can pursue a principled and detailed strategy to promote limited government.
Ronald Reagan campaigned promising to abolish the Department of Education, but backed down in 1985 citing insufficient congressional support. Since then, the department has followed an unwavering course, removing control of education policy from state and local governments and adding it to the already massively powerful federal regulatory state. Both Democrat and Republican administrations have used the Education Department to aggrandize federal power, and to increasingly diminish the tradition of local control of education. This has resulted in at best inconsistent and incoherent policies, and at worst expensive and literally disastrous programs.
In the wake of Obama’s authoritarian use of the Department of Education to force the country into new and controversial social norms, Trump ought to imitate Reagan and explicitly come out for ending that bureaucracy. If he is elected, he should do Reagan one better and follow through.
In past statements Trump’s made on the topic he has come out against Common Core and in favor of “cutting” the Department of Education to an unspecified degree. Trump can redeem Reagan’s error and by implication inherit a bit of that president’s conservative bona fides by calling now for the dismantling of the department. That would encourage conservatives, and even probably win Trump some quiet support among a group of people aggrieved by federal intervention, but generally afraid to say so -- teachers. While teacher unions will never support Trump, and you might be hard pressed to find a single teacher at a public school openly supporting the candidate, not a few would privately cheer the elimination of the entity that has largely forced trendy, ever changing policies on the schools, increased testing to senseless levels, and imposed draconian and secretive ratings systems. Who knows what lever they might pull in the privacy of the voting booth?
Trump’s position on the “bathroom issue” as it relates to self-described transgender people has been tolerant, as might be expected from a real estate mogul with prime properties in Manhattan, San Francisco, and the like, and given Trump’s generalized liberalism on social and economic issues. With respect to transsexuals in bathrooms he appears to share an outlook similar to that of his frequent conservative critic Charles Krauthammer, who viewed North Carolina “bathroom law” as a “solution in search of an issue” and a mistake for Republicans politically.
That might have been a reasonable view until the Obama’s administration’s actions regarding schools and coverage of transsexuals under the Affordable Care Act. It is clear that Obama’s moves are not merely political opportunism, but a well-planned and previously prepared attack on state’s rights, part of the administration’s long-game of maximally aggrandizing and expanding federal power, as well as satisfying Obama’s (and his party’s) biases against those bitter Americans who still cling to guns and religion. Federal directives on transgender “rights” were well in the works before North Carolina passed its bathroom legislation. One way or another, Obama was intent once again on imposing his will on the states and the people, regardless of his Constitutional obligations.
While the liberal media is playing to form championing the administration’s actions, popular support for these initiatives is much thinner than the pro-Obama press makes it seem. Pushing the transgender agenda in the schools is elitist, and not in keeping with the values of much of Obama’s core constituencies in the black and Hispanic communities. While Obama doesn’t have to worry about this in November, Hillary Clinton does. Trump doesn’t need blacks and Hispanics to defect to him, just lose motivation to vote. Traditional churchgoing blacks turned out for Obama despite a radically liberal social agenda because of racial solidarity that won’t be there for Hillary. And the American public in general, already unhappy with ObamaCare, will not be further soothed by the prospect of deductibles and premiums rising in order to pay for some guy’s idea that he is really a gal, unless he reconsiders and decides he’s a guy again.
The bottom line is that the American public is not warming to Obama’s progressive offensive which deliberately confuses a radical leftist LGBT agenda with the rhetoric of civil rights. Polls out before the Department of Education’s school edict demonstrate a dramatic decline in support for transgender bathroom use. If this unscientific online poll from liberal New Jersey is any indicator, Obama’s schools policy is very unpopular. For a candidate like Trump with a populist bent and program, it is kind of a no-brainer.
Trump is presumably a sexual libertine, but this is not about sex as such. It’s about the government invading the most delicate of personal situations, dictating who is in the bathroom with your 12-year-old daughter, and who she showers with at school. Nor is it a civil rights issue. This is not a case of alleviating overt discriminatory practices against a recognized racial community that makes up a substantial portion of the populace. It is about granting extraordinary privileges to a self-selected “personal identity” sub-group that likely makes up well under 1% of the population. And the purpose of privileging that sub-group is to demonstrate and expand government power, thus to cow the people into submission, so that more serious restrictions on personal liberty can follow.
Trump ought to put out a formal position on education policy that includes a promise to abolish the Department of Education. Along with his already stated policy to support the repeal of Obamacare, this would firm up wavering conservatives, prove popular among swing voters and even many Democrats, and be in keeping with Trump’s populist message.
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