Is America Worth Saving and Is The Kristol Recipe Worth Following? Go Vote And Think About The Supreme Court When You Do!

The Socialist Do Gooders!
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Will Obama press forward with his his demonic desire to rid the world of nuclear weapons even if it makes it more unsafe. Stick around and see. (See 1 below.)
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Obama cannot escape the fact that much of the racial discord can be laid at the door of The Obama White House and Obama Justice Department. (See 2 below.)
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Dowd dumps on Hillary.  Even Dowd seems resigned to Bonnie and Clyde.  How sad.

Meanwhile Bill Kristol continues to plead for Romney and Kasich to stop Trump at The Convention, rather than climb aboard the Donald Caboose and really get behind the most logical way to derail the Clinton's, considering the two available choices.

Kristol is a bright man but his advice is impractical and that is the problem with the ingrained in The Republican Party. Too many bright people live in their own world, and cannot relate to those who live in the real world, want to win and know you cannot have it all. Kristol and his ilk remind me of the playground  kids who did not like the game so they picked up their marbles and went home.

The Electoral College construct favors Democrats, Obama's obsession with filling border red states with undocumented aliens and stuffing them with goodies, at tax payer expense, further insures a Democrat victory and the fact that Democrats want to win more than Republicans favors Democrats.

However, that is no reason to shoot yourself in the foot. Those bullets should be directed at the opposition and if that does not work then perhaps the nation Democrats, liberals and progressives helped us become is not worth saving.

Living in a European failed state or, even worse, a future South American corrupt disaster is not my idea of what The Founding Fathers sought for us as we broke from England.  But if that is where we are headed and we are too blind to care about freedom, about private ownership, about the right to worship and adhere to the law and curb the power of an all consuming central government, so be it,

America has always been a concept that fostered the belief man inherited his inalienable rights from God and this was preferable.  If we believe we are better for our rights to be derived from Democrats, liberals and progressives and  we will improve more by following their laws, their rules, their dictum's then , perhaps, we have become a nation not worth saving.

It has taken us 240 years to move far enough away from our Constitutional moorings so further drift seems inevitable.

The story goes, Ben Franklin responded to the scullery maid's question saying: "We have a Republic if we can keep it." I do not know why we have decided our imperfect Republic is not preferable to what the Democrats, liberals and progressives offer.  So much of what they have tried has proven fallible because it defied simple logic.  We have traded pipe dreams for brilliance, we have vacated reason for the impractical , We have traded the substantive for the ephemeral and we seem to relish the embrace of stupidity.

Why? I guess man is restless, never satisfied and believes change is preferable to status quo. Certainly progress is beneficial and man has accomplished great changes and betterment through science, technology, the encouragement of ethical pursuit.  But even betterment can be carried too far when it involves an exchange with what has been the basis of allowing for so much betterment, ie. freedom to think and pursue, to own and to trade in free markets, to be independent, to have earned self-respect, to work and provide etc.

Democrats, liberals and progressives have a more radical view.  They prefer socialism and believe centralized government, rule by bureaucrats distant from the governed is preferable.  They believe people are entitled to what they want and need and these wants and needs should be paid for by those who have more wealth because wealth can only be ill gotten, They believe in equal outcomes and have little tolerance for disparity. They believe collective wisdom preferable to individualism.

Frankly, their's is a dull world of enslaved humanized robots trapped by insecurity and jealousy. Their story has been  told by many past contemporary authors such as Ayn Rand, George Orwell, Frederick Hayek etc.

Socialist do gooders appeal to the weak , the uneducated and the desperate.  America was not founded by the likes of those possessing such temperament and character but the dependent, the discontented, the weak, the less reasoning have grown in numbers and power and now seem to prevail. Thus. the appeal of the Obama's, Clinton's and all the other political charlatans selling their mysterious, beguiling brew.

Hillary can be stopped but the person one must vote for, to stop her, is not appealing. I understand this completely but if one just focuses on the prospective appointments to The Supreme Court chosen by Hillary or Trump, it is a non issue for me.  Nothing can drive more nails in the coffin of our union than more liberals on and in control of  The Supreme Court, who are more interested in rowing away from our Constitution than enforcing its intent.

So go vote and think about this when you do.(See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1)

Obama plans major nuclear policy changes in his final months

By Josh Rogin 

The Obama administration is determined to use its final six months in office to take a series of executive actions to advance the nuclear agenda the president has advocated since his college days. It’s part of Obama’s late push to polish a foreign policy legacy that is plagued by challenges on several other fronts.

President Obama announced his drive to reduce the role of nuclear weapons and eventually rid the world of them in his first major foreign policy speech, in Prague in 2009. In his first years, he achieved some successes, such as the New START treaty with Russia, the Nuclear Security Summits and the controversial Iran deal. But progress waned in the past year as more pressing crises commanded the White House’s attention. Now, the president is considering using the freedom afforded a departing administration to cross off several remaining items on his nuclear wish list.

In recent weeks, the national security Cabinet members known as the Principals Committee held two meetings to review options for executive actions on nuclear policy. Many of the options on the table are controversial, but by design none of them require formal congressional approval. No final decisions have been made, but Obama is expected to weigh in personally soon.

“As we enter the homestretch of the Obama presidency, it’s worth remembering that he came into office with a personal commitment to pursuing diplomacy and arms control,” deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes told the Arms Control Association on June 6. “I can promise you today that President Obama is continuing to review a number of ways he can advance the Prague agenda over the course of the next seven months. Put simply, our work is not finished on these issues.”

Several U.S. officials briefed on the options told me they include declaring a “no first use” policy for the United States’ nuclear arsenal, which would be a landmark change in the country’s nuclear posture. Another option under consideration is seeking a U.N. Security Council resolution affirming a ban on the testing of nuclear weapons. This would be a way to enshrine the United States’ pledge not to test without having to seek unlikely Senate ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

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The administration is also considering offering Russia a five-year extension of the New START treaty’s limits on deployed nuclear weapons, even though those limits don’t expire until 2021. This way, Obama could ensure that the next administration doesn’t let the treaty lapse. Some administration officials want to cancel or delay development of a new nuclear cruise missile, called the Long-Range Stand-Off weapon, because it is designed for a limited nuclear strike, a capability Obama doesn’t believe the United States needs. Some officials want to take most deployed nukes off of “hair trigger” alert.

The administration also wants to cut back long-term plans for modernizing the nation’s nuclear arsenal, which the Congressional Budget Office reports will cost about $350 billion over the next decade. Obama may establish a blue-ribbon panel of experts to examine the long-term budget for these efforts and find ways to scale it back.

Republican congressional leaders are already warning the administration not to use its final months to take actions they say would betray promises to Congress and weaken the United States’ nuclear deterrent. On June 17, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) wrote to Obama to warn him not to unravel their deal on nuclear modernization, which they said persuaded Congress to ratify New START. They acknowledged that the current plan may be fiscally unsustainable but pledged to work with the administration to address the shortfalls.

Opponents in Congress also believe the administration is not taking into consideration how big changes in U.S. nuclear policy would affect allies that live under the U.S. nuclear umbrella, especially in Europe and Northeast Asia. But arms control advocates, Democratic lawmakers and former officials are pressing the administration to announce as many new policies as possible. For them, Obama has one last chance to make good on his nuclear promises.

“It’s pretty clear the Prague agenda has stalled,” said Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, which supports groups advocating for nuclear nonproliferation. “There isn’t anything that the president does that isn’t criticized by his opponents, so he might as well do what he wants. He’s relishing his last days in office.”

By focusing on nuclear weapons, Obama sees an opportunity to cement a foreign policy legacy despite setbacks and incomplete efforts in several other areas. But by doing it unilaterally, without congressional buy-in, and in a hurried way, he risks launching policies that might not last much longer than his presidency.  

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2)

Unraveling Obama’s False Narratives

JONATHAN S. TOBIN

President Obama stated something that was incontrovertibly true on Saturday when he said, “America is not as divided as some have suggested.” He’s right. The awful nature of two police shootings of African-Americans last week followed by the horror of the murder of five police officers in Dallas has left some Americans feeling as if their country is falling apart. The comparison being mooted in many places was to 1968 when race riots and political assassinations seemed to drive the country to the brink of chaos. So President Obama did the right thing when he sought to use the bully pulpit of the presidency to remind us that this perception is highly misleading. As bad as the last week felt—and it felt very bad indeed—there is no comparison to that moment of crisis.

But if many Americans feel as if the nation is heading toward an abyss, it is due in no small measure to the same person who is, belatedly, trying to calm public opinion. Throughout his presidency and in particular during the last two years since the shooting in Ferguson, Missouri in August 2014, he and other administration figures, such as former Attorney General Eric Holder, have worked hard to promote a false narrative of resurgent American racism. If the president is now trying to assert that individual acts of violence, whether an arguably unjustified shooting by a police officer or a mass shooting by a disturbed individual, should not cause us to jump to conclusions about that act representing the intentions of an entire group, then it is he, as much as anyone who has encouraged Americans to think in this manner. Having helped to encourage that fundamental misreading of American society as irremediably racist despite the fact that we twice elected an African-American to the presidency, it is a little too little and far too late for him to be offering wiser counsel.

It must be understood that the Black Lives Matter movement, which has done its best to perpetuate the myth that all blacks are in danger from the police everywhere, did not operate in a vacuum. Though their hateful statements were more extreme than anything said by the president or Holder, the administration helped legitimize the now widely held belief that police are an out-of-control force that is over-militarized and inclined to murder minorities with impunity.

The closer one looks at many of the individual episodes that form the core of the racism narrative, the harder it is to fit them into a pre-existing context. Some of the iconic incidents that sent people into the streets and provoked outrage from the White House and were held up as “proof” that it is open season on blacks by cops have turned out to undermine the racism narrative. The death that set off this movement—the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri—was judged by legal authorities to be justified.

To state this is not to deny that there are instances of police misconduct. Like all governmental agencies and employees, police departments and officers are fallible. But if there is a heightened sense of an adversarial relationship between police and some of the minority communities they serve, it has been exacerbated by forces like Black Lives Matter in an irresponsible manner. They have seized on every tragedy that could be possibly viewed through a racial lens and done their best to use it to promote an inchoate agenda that promoted hatred. Racism is an integral element of the history of this country and should never be ignored or underestimated. It has even reared its ugly head at times during the presidential campaign. But it cannot explain every crime or action taken by the police.

If that is what President Obama is trying to tell us now, then that is to his credit. After the latest tragedies, the country desperately needs to be reassured that what unites is far greater than those things that can tear us apart. But even as we look to the president for the sort of uplifting rhetoric that first brought him to national prominence, we can’t ignore the cognitive dissonance at the heart of what he has said.

If he’s right that we shouldn’t interpret the Dallas shooting as proof that all those who protest against the police support sympathize with individuals who seek to kill whites and police officers, he should take some responsibility for how the false narrative of racism helped divide us in the first place. Doing so should also serve as a reminder that the primary victims of the war on police have been minority communities where crime rates have gone up in response to the inability of cops to do their jobs.

Moreover, though he’s right that we must judge all Americans as individuals and not hold innocents responsible for the crimes of others, his comparison of last week’s violence to shootings by ISIS sympathizers is just as misleading. An armed, concerted international movement that genuinely seeks the destruction of the West–not a generalized perception of racial bias–inspired those attacks. Nor does it help when he responds to these incidents by trotting out his familiar denunciation of guns and promotion of laws that would do nothing to prevent mass shootings. Doing so only feeds the cynicism that continues to eat away at our civic discourse on his watch.

Sensible Americans know that it is possible to be as outraged by unjustified police shootings as they are about attacks on police. But they must also acknowledge that those that have done so much to widen a racial divide are responsible for much harm. We need to hear calming rhetoric from the president now. But he has no standing to lecture us without owning up to his part in the mess in which we find ourselves.

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3) 

The Clinton Contamination

By Maureen Dowd

IT says a lot about our relationship with Hillary Clinton that she seems well on her way to becoming Madam President because she’s not getting indicted.

If she were still at the State Department, she could be getting fired for being, as the F.B.I. director told Congress, “extremely careless” with top-secret information. Instead, she’s on a glide path to a big promotion.

And that’s the corkscrew way things go with the Clintons, who are staying true to their reputation as the Tom and Daisy Buchanan of American politics. Their vast carelessness drags down everyone around them, but they persevere, and even thrive.

In a mere 11 days, arrogant, selfish actions by the Clintons contaminated three of the purest brands in Washington — Barack Obama, James Comey and Loretta Lynch — and jeopardized the futures of Hillary’s most loyal aides.

It’s quaint, looking back at her appointment as secretary of state, how Obama tried to get Hillary without the shadiness. (Which is what we all want, of course.)

The president and his aides attempted to keep a rein on Clinton’s State Department — refusing to let her bring in her hit man, Sidney Blumenthal.

But in the end, Hillary’s goo got on Obama anyhow. On Tuesday, after Comey managed to make both Democrats and Republicans angry by indicting Clinton politically but not legally, Barry and Hillary flew to Charlotte, N.C., for their first joint campaign appearance.

Obama was left in the awkward position of vouching for Hillary’s “steady judgment” to run an angry, violent, jittery nation on the very day that his F.B.I. director lambasted her errant judgment on circumventing the State Department email system, making it clear that she had been lying to the American public for the last 16 months.

Comey, who was then yanked up to Capitol Hill for a hearing on Thursday, revealed that instead of no emails with classified information, as Hillary had insisted, there were 110, of those turned over to the State Department. Instead of Clinton’s assurances that the server in the basement in Chappaqua had never been breached, Comey said it was possible that hostile actors had hacked Clinton’s email account. Among the emails not given to State, he said at least three contained classified information.

Hillary had already compromised the president, who feels he needs her to cement his legacy. Obama angered F.B.I. agents when he was interviewed on CBS’s “60 Minutes” last fall and undermined the bureau’s investigation by exonerating Hillary before the F.B.I. was done with its work, saying pre-emptively, “This is not a situation in which America’s national security was endangered.”

Hillary willfully put herself above the rules — again — and a president, campaign and party are all left twisting themselves into pretzels defending her.

Obama aimed to have no shadows, but the Clintons operate in shadows.

After Bill Clinton crossed the tarmac in Phoenix to have a long chat with Lynch, the attorney general confessed that the ill-advised meeting had “cast a shadow” over her department’s investigation into his wife and that she would feel constrained to follow the recommendation of the F.B.I.

“I certainly wouldn’t do it again,” Lynch said, admitting it hit her “painfully” that she had made a mistake dancing with the Arkansas devil in the pale moonlight.

The meeting seemed even more suspect a week later, when The Times reported that Hillary might let Lynch stay on in a new Clinton administration.

The fallout from the email scandal has clouded the futures of longtime Hillary aides Cheryl Mills, Huma Abedin and Jake Sullivan, who were also deemed extremely careless by Comey for their handling of classified information. The Times reported that they could face tough questions as they seek security clearances for diplomatic or national security posts. (Not to mention remiss in not pushing back on Clinton about the private server.)

“You’ve got a situation here where the woman who would be in charge of setting national security policy as president has been deemed by the F.B.I. unsuitable to safeguard and handle classified information,” Bill Savarino, a Washington lawyer specializing in security clearances, told the Times.

So many lawyers in this column, so little law.

President Obama is not upset about being pulled into the Clinton Under Toad, to use an old John Irving expression. He thinks Washington is so broken that the next president will need a specific skill set to function, and he thinks Hillary has that.

But what should disturb Obama, who bypassed his own vice president to lay out the red carpet for Hillary, is that the email transgression is not a one off. It’s part of a long pattern of ethical slipping and sliding, obsessive secrecy and paranoia, and collateral damage.

Comey’s verdict that Hillary was “negligent” was met with sighs rather than shock. We know who Hillary and Bill are now. We’ve been held hostage to their predilections and braided intrigues for a long time. (On the Hill, Comey refused to confirm or deny that he’s investigating the Clinton Foundation, with its unseemly tangle of donors and people doing business with State.)

We’re resigned to the Clintons focusing on their viability and disregarding the consequences of their heedless actions on others. They’re always offering a Faustian deal. This year’s election bargain: Put up with our iniquities or get Trump’s short fingers on the nuclear button.

The Clintons work hard but don’t play by the rules. Imagine them in the White House with the benefit of low expectations.

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