A friend who believes Trump is a fascist and ignores
those who stop free speech on college campuses etc.
and then blames victims of causing the fracas and
was not even aware of the State Department's lying
or Rhode's manipulation of the truth regarding The
Iran Deal.
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I have just returned from a beautiful wedding in Atlanta and leave again in the morning for an overnight with friends in Hilton Head, returning very late Tuesday. Do not mean to overload you with memos but wanted to send this before I left.
Glick exposes the road to Rhodes' successful efforts to cover up Obama's intentions in The Iran Deal. (See 1 and 1a below.)
Bill Whittle and some meaningful Firewalls:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
The more powerful and costly the lawyer the less they seem to remember. Hiring lawyers with amnesia seems to be something The Clinton's and their faithful "servers" are expert at accomplishing. Perhaps when the lawyer knows too much they somehow commit "suicide." (See 2 below.)
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It's the economy stupid! (See 3 below.)
Obama praises and Hillary and Bernie assault. (See 3a below.)
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Some humor: I went into the confessional box after years of being away from the Church.
Inside I found a fully equipped bar with Guinness on tap. On one wall, there's a row of decanters with fine Irish whiskey and Waterford crystal glasses... On the other wall is a dazzling array of the finest cigars and chocolates.
Then the priest came in. I said to him: "Father, forgive me, for it's been a very long time since I've been to confession, but I must first admit that the confessional box is much more inviting than it used to be."
He replied: " You moron, you're on my side.
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1)"But now we see, that through Rhodes the Iraq Study Group’s recommendation became the blueprint for a new US strategy of retreat and Iranian ascendance in Iraq and throughout the Middle East."
Iran’s chess board
Strategic thinking has always been Israel’s Achilles’ heel. As a small state bereft of regional ambitions, so long as regional realities remained more or less static, Israel had little reason to be concerned about the great game of the Middle East.
But the ground is shifting in the lands around us. The Arab state system, which ensured the strategic status quo for decades, has collapsed.
So for the first time in four generations, strategy is again the dominant force shaping events that will impact Israel for generations to come.
To understand why, consider two events of the past week.
Early this week it was reported that after a two-year hiatus, Iran is restoring its financial support for Islamic Jihad. Iran will give the group, which is largely a creation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, $70 million.
On Wednesday Iranian media were the first to report on the arrest of a “reporter” for Iran’s Al-Alam news service. Bassam Safadi was arrested by Israel police in his home in Majdal Shams, the Druse village closest to the border with Syria on the Golan Heights. Safadi is suspected of inciting terrorism.
That is, he is suspected of being an Iranian agent.
There is nothing new about Iranian efforts to raise and run fronts against Israel within its territory and along its borders. Iran poses a strategic threat to Israel through its Hezbollah surrogate in Lebanon, which now reportedly controls the Lebanese Armed Forces.
In Gaza, Iran controls a vast assortment of terrorist groups, including Hamas.
In Judea and Samaria, seemingly on a weekly basis we hear about another Iranian cell whose members were arrested by the Shin Bet or the IDF.
But while we are well aware of the efforts Iran is making along our borders and even within them to threaten Israel, we have not connected these efforts to Iran’s actions in Iraq and Syria. Only when we connect Iran’s actions here with its actions in those theaters do we understand what is now happening, and how it will influence Israel’s long-term strategic environment.
The big question today is what will replace the Arab state system.
Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and Libya no longer exist. On their detritus we see the fight whose results will likely determine the fates of the surviving Arab states, as well as of much of Europe and the rest of the world.
Israel’s strategic environment will be determined in great part by the results of Iran’s actions in Iraq and Syria. While Israel can do little to affect the shape of events in these areas, it must understand what they mean for us. Only by doing so, will we be able to develop the tools to secure our future in this new strategic arena.
Until 2003, Saddam Hussein was the chief obstacle to Iran’s rise as the regional hegemon.
US forces in Iraq replaced Hussein until they left the country in 2011. In the meantime, by installing a Shi’ite government in Baghdad, the US set the conditions for the rise of Islamic State in the Sunni heartland of Anbar province on the one hand, and for Iran’s control over Iraq’s Shi’ite-controlled government and armed forces on the other.
Today, ISIS is the only thing checking Iran’s westward advance. Ironically, the monstrous group also facilitates it. ISIS is so demonic that for Americans and other Westerners, empowering Iranian-controlled forces that fight ISIS seems a small price to pay to rid the world of the fanatical scourge.
As former US naval intelligence analyst J.E. Dyer explained this week in an alarming analysis of Iran’s recent moves in Iraq published on the Liberty Unyielding website, once Iranian- controlled forces defeat ISIS in Anbar province, they will be well placed to threaten Jordan and Israel from the east. This is particularly the case given that ISIS is serving inadvertently as an advance guard for Iran.
In Syria, Iran already controls wide swaths of the country directly and through its surrogates, the Syrian army, Hezbollah and Shi’ite militias it has fielded in the country.
Since the start of the war in Syria, Israel has repeatedly taken action to block those forces from gaining and holding control over the border zone on the Golan Heights.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s surprising recent announcement that Israel will never relinquish control over the Golan came in response to his concern that in exchange for a cease-fire in Syria, the US would place that control on the international diplomatic chopping block.
A week and a half ago, Iran began its move on Anbar province.
On May 22, Iraqi forces trained by the US military led Iraq’s offensive to wrest control over Fallujah and Mosul from ISIS, which has controlled the Sunni cities since 2014. Despite the fact that the lead forces are US-trained, the main forces involved in the offensive are trained, equipped and directed by Iran.
As Iraqi forces surrounded Fallujah in the weeks before the offensive began, Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds forces, paid a public visit to the troops to demonstrate Iran’s dominant role.
The battle for Fallujah is a clear indication that Iran, rather than the US, is calling the shots in Iraq. According to media reports, the Pentagon wanted and expected for the forces to be concentrated in Mosul. But at the last minute, due to Soleimani’s intervention, the Iraqi government decided to make Fallujah the offensive’s center of gravity.
The Americans had no choice but to go along with the Iranian plan because, as Dyer noted, Iran is increasingly outflanking the US in Iraq. If things follow their current course, in the near future, Iran is liable to be in a position to force the US to choose between going to war or ceasing all air operations in Iraq.
On May 7, Asharq al-Awsat reported that the Revolutionary Guards is building a missile base in Suleimaniyah province, in Iraqi Kurdistan.
A senior IRGC general has made repeated visits to the area in recent weeks, signaling that the regime views this as an important project. The report further stated that Iran is renewing tunnel networks in the region, built during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War.
Dyer warned that depending on the type of missiles Iran deploys – or has deployed – to the base, it may threaten all US air operations in Iraq. And the US has no easy means to block Iran’s actions.
To date, commentators have more or less agreed that US operations in Iraq and Syria make no sense. They are significant enough to endanger US forces, but they aren’t significant enough to determine the outcome of the war in either territory.
But there may be logic to this seemingly irrational deployment that is concealed from view. A close reading of David Samuels’s profile of President Barack Obama’s Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes published last month in The New York Times, points to such a conclusion.
Samuels described Rhodes as second only to Obama in his influence over US foreign and defense policy. Rhodes boasted to Samuels that Obama’s moves toward Iran were determined by a strategic course he embraced before he entered office.
A fiction writer by training, Rhodes’s first “national security” job was as the chief note taker for the Iraq Study Group.
Then-president George W. Bush appointed the group, jointly chaired by former secretary of state James Baker and former congressman Lee Hamilton, in 2006, to advise him on how to extricate the US from the war in Iraq.
In late 2006, the ISG published its recommendations.
Among other things, the ISG recommended withdrawing US forces from Iraq as quickly as possible. The retreat was to be enacted in cooperation with Iran and Syria – the principle sponsors of the insurgency.
The ISG argued that if given the proper incentives, Syria and Iran would fight al-Qaida in Iraq in place of the US. For such action, the ISG recommended that the US end its attempts to curb Iran’s nuclear program.
Responsibility for handling the threat, the ISG recommended, should be transferred to the US Security Council.
So, too, the ISG recommended that Bush pressure Israel to withdraw from the Golan Heights, Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria in the framework of a “peace process.”
Such action too would serve to convince Iran and Syria that they could trust the US and agree to serve as its heirs in Iraq.
Bush of course, rejected the ISG’s recommendations. He decided instead to sue for victory in Iraq. Bush announced the surge in US forces shortly after the ISG published its report.
But now we see, that through Rhodes the Iraq Study Group’s recommendation became the blueprint for a new US strategy of retreat and Iranian ascendance in Iraq and throughout the Middle East.
The chief components of that strategy have already been implemented. The US withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 left Iran as the new power broker in the country. The nuclear pact with Iran facilitated Iran’s transformation into the regional hegemon.
Against this strategic shift, the US’s minimalist campaigns in Iraq and Syria against ISIS make sense.
The US forces aren’t there to defeat ISIS, but to conceal Iran’s rise.
When ISIS is defeated in Anbar and in Raqqa in Syria, its forces are liable to turn west, to Jordan.
The US is currently helping Jordan to complete a border fence along its border with Iraq. But then ISIS is already active in Jordan.
And if events in Iraq and Syria are any guide, where ISIS leads, Iran will follow.
Iran’s strategic game, as well as America’s, requires Israel to become a strategic player.
We must recognize that what is happening in Iraq is connected to what is happening here.
We need to understand the implications of the working alliance Obama has built with Iran.
Even if Obama’s successor disavows his actions, by the time Obama leaves office, America’s options will be more limited than ever before. Without war, his successor will likely be unable to stem Iran’s rise on the ruins of the Arab state system.
In this new strategic environment, Israel must stop viewing Gaza, Judea and Samaria, the Golan Heights and Lebanon as standalone battlefields. We must not be taken in by “regional peace plans” that would curtail our maneuver room. And we must bear in mind these new conditions as we negotiate a new US military assistance package.
The name of the game today is chess. The entire Middle East is one great board. When a pawn moves in Gaza, it affects the queen in Tehran.
And when a knight moves in Fallujah, it threatens the queen in Jerusalem.
1a)
Israel to Place Gorillas Near Gaza; Hopes Int’l Community Will Care About Rocket Attacks
Looking to raise awareness and concern over the flood of rockets launched from the Gaza Strip for the past decade, Israel has decided to place gorillas throughout the communities and neighboring towns surrounding Gaza.
“For years we’ve highlighted the deaths of innocent men, women, and children from these rockets, but people throughout Europe and on college campuses in the U.S. continued to support Hamas,” a spokesman for the Israeli government told The Mideast Beast. “After seeing the outpouring of anger over the death of Harambe the gorilla, we realized we’ve been doing it all wrong.”
Israel will now place a handful of gorillas in Ashdod, Ashkelon, Sderot and other communities in the south that have seen a high number of rocket attacks. While Hamas publically insists the move won’t change its military approach, some Hamas commanders expressed concern in private conversations.
“If one of our rockets were to kill a gorilla, we would completely alienate our core support base of 18 to 22-year-old left-wing American Facebook commenters,” one senior Hamas official told The Mideast Beast off record. “That’s not a risk we can take lightly.”
In response, Hamas has announced plans to acquire relatives of Cecil the Lion to place in Gaza neighborhoods in order to encourage Israeli airstrikes. “Using Cecil’s relatives as human shields will certainly work to help us convince the international community to ostracize Israel, as it has the dentist who killed Cecil. Plus, we’ll have more children around whose spare hands we could use to dig tunnels. So, you know, win–win!”
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2)
Clinton’s Lawyer, Under Oath
Hillary’s aide is so evasive that she can’t even clearly vouch for her own honesty.
Cheryl Mills in Washington, D.C., in 2015. PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS
This is, after all, Cheryl Mills. For more than 20 years, she has served as the Clintons’ very own Winston Wolf ( Harvey Keitel in “Pulp Fiction”)—their fixer, their problem-solver. From impeachment right up through Benghazi and the server, Ms. Mills is the one constant in the behind-the-scenes obstruction. The less she talks, the more alarm bells ought to ring.
Opinion Journal Video
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton on the former Hillary Clinton aide’s deposition in a case concerning the former Secretary of State’s private server. Photo credit: Getty Images.
This was the measure to watch when Ms. Mills arrived last Friday to sit for an interview with attorneys for Judicial Watch, which has sued the State Department over missing federal records.
In early May the oversight group convinced a federal judge to order discovery into the creation and operation of Mrs. Clinton’s private server. Judicial Watch was granted permission to depose seven central figures, including Ms. Mills, who served as Hillary’s aide at the State Department and later as her private lawyer.
Mrs. Clinton claims she set up the home-brew server in an innocent act aimed at convenience, so it was notable that Ms. Mills marched into her deposition accompanied by no fewer than seven lawyers—three representing Ms. Mills herself, and two each from the Justice and State departments. Two of the government lawyers made clear that they were not only representing their departments but also guarding Ms. Mills in her capacity as a former federal employee. This is President Obama’s assist for Mrs. Clinton.
The lawyers earned their pay. The entire 270-page transcript of the deposition, which Judicial Watch released Tuesday, has an almost eye-glazing repetition about it.
A persistent Judicial Watch attorney attempts to ask Ms. Mills a straightforward question. Before she even finishes, Ms. Mills’s army of attorneys falls all over itself to object, to insist that the query is outside the “scope” of the inquiry or too vague, and to instruct the witness not to answer.
On the rare occasions that they do allow Ms. Mills to open her mouth, it is only after coaching her on what is a permissible response. Not that they need to worry, as Ms. Mills appears to have lived on a distant planet the past several decades.
She doesn’t “know” or can’t “recall” even basic facts or conversations. “I don’t recall having such discussions.” “I can’t speak” to that. “I don’t have a recollection of doing so.” “I don’t know the answer to that question.”
She can’t, or won’t, make a direct statement even about her own honesty. “Are there any reasons why you would not be able to answer truthfully here today?” asks the Judicial Watch attorney. “Not that I know of,” Ms. Mills responds, suggesting that there may be reasons she’s lying, but that she probably won’t recall them until later.
In the spirit of looking cooperative, Ms. Mills did on occasion natter away, filling time with utterly irrelevant factoids about State Department org charts and her interest in Haiti and food security. In this way, she managed to spend most of a day evading and stonewalling every relevant question.
Notably, the Mills team spends much of the interview suggesting she had no real knowledge of the system while on the federal payroll. Why does the timing matter? Because Ms. Mills began working as a private lawyer for Mrs. Clinton after they left government. Anything she learned at that point is therefore protected by attorney-client privilege. Which is convenient.Ms. Mills can barely recall any conversation with anyone while at the State Department about a server, or email, or anything. She is clueless or mum on why the server came to be or who knew about it, or how it worked.
Frustrating as this surely was for Judicial Watch and the nation, it can’t have been surprising. The Clintons haven’t survived all these years without the support of talented people, and Ms. Mills—give her credit—is unrivaled when it comes to protecting her bosses. Her deposition was something approaching performance art, a perfectly crafted mix of polite ignorance, purposeful misdirection and clever defense.
Yet the presence of all those lawyers proves that Ms. Mills knows she, and her boss, could have a major problem.
What is Bryan Pagliano, the former Clinton IT specialist, telling the FBI under his reported immunity deal? Will it conflict with the Mills deposition? (Interestingly, Mr. Pagliano recently announced he intends to plead the Fifth at his upcoming Judicial Watch deposition.) And what does federal Judge Emmet Sullivan think when he reads the transcript of the Mills runaround? He ordered this discovery to get answers, and it’s eminently clear that Ms. Mills is deliberately not giving them.
Her performance is all anyone needs to know about Mrs. Clinton’s guilt in the server scandal. Someone who set up a home-brew email system for “convenience” wouldn’t need people like Cheryl Mills.
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3)Current European tax Rates:
3a)
France
Income Tax: 40%; VAT: 19.6%; TOTAL TAX: 59.6%
Income Tax: 40%; VAT: 19.6%; TOTAL TAX: 59.6%
Spain
Income Tax: 45%; VAT: 16%; TOTAL TAX: 61%
Income Tax: 45%; VAT: 16%; TOTAL TAX: 61%
Portugal Income Tax: 42%; VAT: 20%; TOTAL TAX: 62%
Greece
Income Tax: 40%; VAT: 25%; TOTAL TAX: 65%
Income Tax: 40%; VAT: 25%; TOTAL TAX: 65%
United Kingdom
Income Tax: 50%; VAT: 17.5%; TOTAL TAX: 67.5%
Income Tax: 50%; VAT: 17.5%; TOTAL TAX: 67.5%
Netherlands
Income Tax: 52%; VAT: 19%; TOTAL TAX: 71%
Income Tax: 52%; VAT: 19%; TOTAL TAX: 71%
Finland
Income Tax: 53%; VAT: 22%; TOTAL TAX: 75%
Income Tax: 53%; VAT: 22%; TOTAL TAX: 75%
Norway
Income Tax: 54.3%; VAT: 25%; TOTAL TAX: 79.3%
Sweden
Income Tax: 55%; VAT: 25%; TOTAL TAX: 80%
Denmark
Income Tax: 58%; VAT: 25%; TOTAL TAX: 83%
Income Tax: 54.3%; VAT: 25%; TOTAL TAX: 79.3%
Sweden
Income Tax: 55%; VAT: 25%; TOTAL TAX: 80%
Denmark
Income Tax: 58%; VAT: 25%; TOTAL TAX: 83%
If you've started to wonder what the real costs of socialism are going to be - once the full program in these United States hits your wallet, take a look at the table above. Digest these mind-boggling figures. Keep in mind that in spite of these astronomical tax rates, these countries are still not financing their social welfare programs exclusively from tax revenues! They are deeply mired in public debt of gargantuan proportions. Greece has reached the point where its debt is so huge it is in imminent danger of defaulting. That is the reason the European economic community has intervened to bail them out. If you're following the financial news, you know Spain and Portugal are right behind Greece .
The United States is now heading right down the same path. The VAT tax in the table is the national sales tax that Europeans pay. Stay tuned because that is exactly what you can expect to see the administration proposing after the fall elections. The initial percentage in the United States isn't going to be anywhere near the outrageous numbers you now see in Europe . Guess what. the current outrageous numbers in Europe didn't start out as outrageous either. They started out as minuscule - right around the 1% or 2% where they will start out in the United States . Magically, however, they ran up over the years to where they are now. Expect the same thing here.
It is the very notion that with hard work and perseverance, anybody can get ahead economically here in the USA . Do you think that can ever happen with tax rates between 60% and 80%? Think again. With the government taking that percentage of your money, your life will be exactly like life in Europe ... You will never be able to buy a home. You will never buy a car. You will never send your children to college. Let's not shuffle the battle cry of the socialists under the rug either. It's always the same cry. Equalize income. Spread the wealth to the poor (whoever they are). Level the economic playing field. Accomplish that and everything will be rosy.
It's time to take a really hard look at reality. Greece is a perfect example. Despite the socialism system that has ruled this country for decades, with a 65% tax rate, Greece is drowning in public debt, would have defaulted without hundreds of billions in bailout money from the EU, and still. . . 20% of their population lives in poverty.
What has all that socialism money bought, besides ultimate power for the politicians running the show? Do you think these people are "free"? They're not. They are slaves to their economic "system."
3a)
Democratic Dissonance on the Economy
Obama claims credit for an economy that Clinton and, even more stridently, Sanders are blasting.
PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
Fissures in the Republican Party are apparent this election season, but there is also plenty of dissonance among Democrats, particularly on economic policy. And the clashes aren’t only between the rival campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Strangely, President Obama is claiming credit for an economy that is being denounced by these would-be successors from his own party. Mrs. Clinton and, even more stridently, Mr. Sanders decry today’s economy as the mediocre result of a rigged system—after 7½ years of Mr. Obama’s policies.
Stranger still, Mrs. Clinton said recently that she would put her husband “in charge of revitalizing the economy,” an unsubtle rebuke to Mr. Obama, suggesting that Americans would do better under Clinton 2.0. But then her campaign quickly amended her statement, telling reporters that Bill would focus on “certain regions or certain sectors,” like the Rust Belt, playing only a “part” in his wife’s economic efforts—and in any case no decision had been made about his having an official role in the administration. Got that?
Meanwhile, the policies Mrs. Clinton espouses—part continued Obamanomics, part watered-down Bernienomics—are the opposite of what led to economic growth in the 1990s, in particular her husband’s successful compromises with Republicans on welfare reform, balancing the budget, trade liberalization, lower capital-gains taxes and financial deregulation.
Presidents, like quarterbacks, get more credit or blame for success or failure than they deserve. New leaders stepping into the White House inherit problems, policies and trends that affect the economy well into their presidencies and beyond. They likewise bequeath economic circumstances to their successors. President Reagan inherited President Carter’s stagflation, and President George H.W. Bush inherited insolvent savings-and-loans and major banks teetering on insolvency from massive loan losses to Third World countries.
While Mr. Clinton deserves credit for the impressive growth of the 1990s, he also owes that success to Reagan’s support of Paul Volcker’s disinflation and President Bush’s resolution of the twin financial crises, which turned headwinds into tailwinds for the Clinton economy. The dot-com boom and bubble benefited Mr. Clinton as well (credit due only if Al Gore really invented the internet), but burst just as he left office.
President Obama inherited a deep recession and a financial crisis that had been building for years, with plenty of blame to go around among borrowers and lenders on Wall Street and Main Street, the Federal Reserve, regulatory and rating agencies, presidents and Congress. But fairly or not, historians document what occurred on your watch and how you dealt with your in-box.
Almost seven years since the recession ended, Mr. Obama has enacted, amid political rancor, myriad policies at great expense to American taxpayers. He reached compromise budget accords with Republicans. But he has failed to curtail the escalating growth of the unfunded liabilities in Social Security and Medicare, now several times the national debt and already squeezing defense spending. What does he have to show for it all?
Mr. Obama will likely go down as having the worst economic-growth record of any president since the trough of the Great Depression in 1933—over eight decades spanning 13 administrations. Mr. Obama thus far has overseen 1.7% average annual economic growth, and the Blue Chip forecast for the remainder of 2016 is only slightly higher. This includes the last six months of the recession, but more important, seven years of anemic recovery. Deep recessions usually are followed by rapid recoveries. For example, the seven years following the deep Reagan recession of 1981-82 averaged 4.6% growth. No wonder Mrs. Clinton is trying to change the subject.
Mr. Obama’s successor will inherit his higher tax rates and pressure for still higher taxes from his doubling of the national debt and failure to address rapidly growing entitlement spending, now including ObamaCare. He or she will also inherit a regulatory morass, a corrosive erosion of the rule of law and separation of powers and a strained national-security budget.
Nevertheless, in addition to doubling down on ObamaCare to cement the president’s legacy, Mrs. Clinton wants to raise Social Security benefits, expand government health care, fund more college subsidies, increase taxes (especially on capital), implement even more financial regulation and expand Mr. Obama’s controversial executive orders, each likely to slow economic growth. In short, she seems not to have gotten her husband’s 1996 memo that “the era of Big Government is over.”
Like any president, Mr. Obama will also leave opportunities for his successor. This long but mediocre expansion could be accelerated with the right pro-growth tax, budget and regulatory policies. Top priorities should be 1) lower personal—and globally competitive corporate—tax rates, combined with curtailing deductions and credits; 2) gradually slowing Social Security growth with price rather than wage indexing of initial benefits for nonpoor future retirees; 3) a Rivlin-Ryan-Wyden premium-support, consumer-choice model for Medicare; and 4) a rigorous regulatory budget cap grounded in honest cost-benefit analysis, independent of agencies proposing the rules.
Such policies, of course, are anathema to the self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders. And switching course to implement any of them wouldn’t be easy for Mrs. Clinton either, now that she has tacked left to court Sanders supporters during the primaries. It is far-fetched, but if she is elected and turns economic policy over to Bill, and Republicans retain Congress, who knows? As this presidential campaign has proven, anything—no matter how bizarre—can happen.
Mr. Boskin, an economics professor at Stanford University and a Hoover Institution senior fellow, was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George H.W. Bush.
