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Our street no longer blocked. We have electric power but sporadic elsewhere. Lot of tree cutting activity.
The organization and efforts of The Landings' Employees and management is commendable. My hat is off to all. We had just recovered from the previous storm and now they have to endure Matthew.
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My sentiments.
Every one is down on Trump now that we know he is vulgar. They seem willing to ignore the fact that Hillary's vulgarity borders on treasonous behaviour and she finds half of America inhabited by deplorables or maybe she really was describing her husband.
Are Americans more interested in salacious details than protecting our nation, getting our economy back on track, creating work for those still willing to remain independent of the stifling impact of government. For me, it is who wants this nation to reject a repeat of the disaster Obama's eight years visited upon America, how he deserted our friends and allies and even allowed Russia to gain total access to the Middle East with total acquiescence from Hillary and Perry.
I am not suggesting Trump is anything marvelous but just questioning priorities. Hillary and Bill are scalawags at best and turning our nation over to them suggests how little one must care about America. I believe it has boiled down to treason and failure versus vulgarity and huge ego. (See 1 below)
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Even tribal Houthi rebels do not fear America's navy. How low have we sunk that some nuts in Yemen feel they can attack our ships knowing we will do nothing?
Who provided them with these weapons? Iran, Obama's friend of course! (See 2 below.)
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Palestinians behave like animals and are rewarded. When Israelis defend themselves the world attacks Israel but I have not heard a peep regarding the deaths perpetrated upon innocents in Aleppo by all parties. (See 3 below.)
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"Did the genesis of our Middle East problems start with "Ike/" (See 4 below.)
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Dick
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++1) MY SAY: OH PULEEZ! GET OFF YOUR HIGH HORSES
Eleven years ago Donald Trump was taped using vulgarity and boasting, like many playboys and locker room machos, about his prowess with women. Disgusting? Sure…but spare me the high dudgeon elicited by strategic release of those tapes, just as Wikileaks revealed more chicanery by Clinton.
Even some conservatives have joined the caterwauling declaring that this is proof positive that Trump is not “presidential.” Presidential??? That bar was lowered decades ago.
Was it presidential when John Kennedy invited Mafia molls to the White House for a roll in the hay? Was it presidential when he and his brother Triborough Fitzgerald Kennedy shared the sexual favors of a pathetic movie star?
Was it presidential when his successor, Lyndon Johnson- purveyor of the ruinous entitlement scam known as “The Great Society” showed his class in conducting press conferences from the toilet?
Was it presidential when Bill Clinton used government employees to find him sex partners? Or how about his encouragement of a besotted intern to become his er….private server…in the oval office?
Ted Kennedy had the gall to attempt a run for the White House and did anyone question whether it was presidential to back off a bridge into water and permit his passenger to drown while he swam away and tried to convince his cousin to take the rap? And Kennedy’s friend Chris Dodd also tried to get into the race for the White House even after he and Kennedy squeezed a waitress between them and fondled her in a sordid incident that begat the name “the Dodd-Kennedy sandwich. Did anyone say that Dodd was not presidential?
And finally, is it presidential for Obama to invite rappers to the White House who extol the murder of policemen and call women bitches and Blacks “niggas?” One was named “Common” and his poem includes : “They watching me, I’m watching them”Them dick boys got a lock of c*** in them.” The most recent presidential invite was in January 2016 when Kendrick Lamar met with President Obama in the Oval Office on Monday. Lamar’s “To Pimp A Butterfly” album shows a group of Black men in front of the White House holding champagne bottles and hundred-dollar bills on top of the dead body of a white judge. Obama has said the rapper’s “How Much a Dollar Cost” which is on that album was his favorite song of 2015. That’s presidential?
Dumping on Trump is stumping for Hillary and that is truly deplorable.
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2) U.S. NAVY SHIP TARGETED IN FAILED MISSILE ATTACK FROM YEMEN: U.S.
A U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer was targeted on Sunday in a failed missile attack from territory in Yemen controlled by Iran-aligned Houthi rebels, a U.S. military spokesman told Reuters, saying neither of the two missiles hit the ship.
The attempted strike on the USS Mason, which was first reported by Reuters, came just a week after a United Arab Emirates vessel came under attack from Houthis and suggests growing risks to the U.S. military from Yemen's conflict.
The U.S. government, which has become increasingly vocal about civilian casualties in the war, this weekend announced a review of its support to a Saudi Arabia-led coalition battling the Houthis after a strike on mourners in the capital Sanaa that killed up to 140 people.
The failed missile attack on the USS Mason began around 7 p.m. local time, when the ship detected two inbound missiles over a 60-minute period in the Red Sea off Yemen's coast, the U.S. military said.
“Both missiles impacted the water before reaching the ship,” Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said. “There were no injuries to our sailors and no damage to the ship.”
Saudi Arabia and the United States blame Shi'ite Iran for supplying weapons to the Houthis. Tehran views the Houthis, who are from a Shi'ite sect, as the legitimate authority in Yemen but denies it supplies them with weapons.
A U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the first missile triggered counter-measures from the USS Mason. It was not immediately clear whether those defenses may have helped prevent a direct hit on the ship.
The USS Mason did not return fire, the official said, adding that the incident took place just north of the Bab al-Mandab strait off Yemen's southern coast.
Last week's attack on the UAE vessel also took place around the Bab al-Mandab strait, in what the UAE branded an “act of terrorism.”
In 2013, more than 3.4 million barrels of oil passed through the 20 km (12 mile)-wide Bab al-Mandab each day, the U.S. Energy Information Administration says.
It was unclear what actions the U.S. military might take, but Davis stressed a commitment to defend freedom of navigation and protect U.S. forces.
“We will continue to take all necessary steps to ensure the safety of our ships and our service members,” he said.
The attack also came the same day that Yemen's powerful former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, a key Houthi ally, called for an escalation of attacks against Saudi Arabia, demanding “battle readiness at the fronts on the (Saudi) border”.
An estimated 10,000 people have been killed in Yemen's war. The United Nations blames Saudi-led coalition strikes for 60 percent of some 3,800 civilian deaths since they began in March 2015.
Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Paul Tait
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3)Tragic Jerusalem Shooting Fueled by Palestinian Incitement
The terrorist, identified as a 39-year-old man from East Jerusalem, was a known violent criminal linked to Hamas with a record of jail time. He had been recently indicted for 15 counts of incitement to violence and seven counts of supporting terror organizations with Facebook posts. In fact, that very morning he was due to report to prison to serve a four-month sentence for previously assaulting a police officer. In the days leading up to the attack, his social media accounts called for rising up against Israel to protect the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount.
Israeli officials investigating the attack point to an increase in Palestinian incitement on social media as a strong motivator for this and other recent attacks. In the past week, Facebook allowed several pro-Hamas pages to be reinstated and active on their site. Over the last year, 42 innocent people have been murdered and over 550 injured in attacks inspired by Palestinian incitement to violence promoted and condoned by the Palestinian Authority's leadership. Following this deadly attack, the supposedly moderate Fatah party and Hamas praised the terrorist as a heroic martyr.
This outrageous pattern of the Palestinian government leaders officially promoting, praising, and even financially rewarding terrorism with exorbitant pensions and salaries paid for with American tax dollars must come to an end. It is not only a crime against the Jewish people. It is a crime against the Palestinian people to lead them away from peace and towards death. We hope and pray that the Palestinian Authority government will choose to end their incitement and tolerance for terrorism, and instead choose to give their people hope and a future. Until then, we stand with everyone - Israeli and Palestinian - who desires peace.
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4)
4)
The Roots of America’s Mideast Delusion
Our history of failure in the Middle East goes all the way back to Eisenhower. James Traub on “Ike’s Gamble” by Michael Doran.
From the moment he took office in 2009, President Barack Obama tried to repair America’s standing in the Middle East by demonstrating his sincere concern for the grievances and aspirations of Arab peoples. He gave interviews to Arab news outlets. He issued New Year’s greetings to the people of Iran. He delivered a speech in Cairo in which he acknowledged America’s past wrongs, and he called on Israel to accept the legitimacy of Palestinian demands for a state. Mr. Obama did almost everything liberal critics of the policies of George W. Bush wished him to do. And he failed. Or rather, he found that the Arab world was afflicted with pathologies that placed it beyond the reach of his words and deeds.
Had Mr. Obama had the chance to read “Ike’s Gamble,” Michael Doran’s account of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s statecraft before, during and after the Suez Crisis of 1956, he might have saved his breath. Mr. Doran, a scholar and former State and Defense Department official in the George W. Bush administration, describes a seasoned, wily and prudent president who aligned the United States with what he understood to be the legitimate hopes of Arab peoples, even at the cost of damaging relations with America’s closest allies—and made a hash of things.
From the moment he took office in 2009, President Barack Obama tried to repair America’s standing in the Middle East by demonstrating his sincere concern for the grievances and aspirations of Arab peoples. He gave interviews to Arab news outlets. He issued New Year’s greetings to the people of Iran. He delivered a speech in Cairo in which he acknowledged America’s past wrongs, and he called on Israel to accept the legitimacy of Palestinian demands for a state. Mr. Obama did almost everything liberal critics of the policies of George W. Bush wished him to do. And he failed. Or rather, he found that the Arab world was afflicted with pathologies that placed it beyond the reach of his words and deeds.
Had Mr. Obama had the chance to read “Ike’s Gamble,” Michael Doran’s account of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s statecraft before, during and after the Suez Crisis of 1956, he might have saved his breath. Mr. Doran, a scholar and former State and Defense Department official in the George W. Bush administration, describes a seasoned, wily and prudent president who aligned the United States with what he understood to be the legitimate hopes of Arab peoples, even at the cost of damaging relations with America’s closest allies—and made a hash of things.
Mr. Doran illuminates a narrative with which very few non-specialists will be familiar. His tale begins at the moment in the early 1950s when America was reaching its zenith. The United Kingdom was reluctantly acknowledging the end of empire, and the United States was filling the vacuum in the Middle East. Neither Eisenhower nor his fervently anti-communist secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, understood this transition in strictly geopolitical terms; both believed that the liberating American faith in national self-determination and consent of the governed would supplant Britain’s self-aggrandizing colonialism. Both morality and national interest dictated such a course. As Dulles said in a prime-time televised address in 1953: “We cannot afford to be distrusted by millions who could be sturdy friends of freedom.
The problem was that in order to do so, they had to sell out their closest ally. To British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Britain’s 80,000-man garrison in Suez was irrefutable proof that his nation remained an imperial force. But Eisenhower and Dulles took Nasser’s side in 1953-4 as he whittled away at British influence and demanded that Britain withdraw its forces. Unintimidated by his former wartime ally, Eisenhower brusquely advised Churchill to defer to “the very strong nationalist sentiments of the Egyptian Government and people” by agreeing to hand over control of the base. Churchill had loudly declared that he had not been elected prime minister to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire; having no choice, he now agreed to do just that.
Britain was one impediment to America’s grand bargain with Nasser; Israel was the other. Eisenhower, Dulles and State Department officials feared that the United States would never win Arab hearts and minds if it was seen as the ally of a nation that almost all Arabs reviled. The problem has hardly gone away over the past six decades. But while the American response today is to gently prod Israel to rein in the growth of illegal settlements, the answer in 1955 was to push Israel to make unilateral territorial concessions—and, remarkably, to present the plan to Nasser for his approval before disclosing it to the Israelis. Mr. Doran makes it clear that the anti-Semitism of the Washington elite converged with what seemed at the time to be perfectly sound strategic calculations.
But Eisenhower’s “gamble” was based on a delusion. Nasser was not an Egyptian George Washington or Moses, determined to lead his people out of colonial bondage and into a proud independence, though this witty and roguish figure did a fine job of playing those roles for gullible American diplomats. Mr. Doran shows that while Nasser claimed to be a moderate barely surviving the pressure of hard-liners, it was he who was pulling the strings. Nasser spoke of Israel as a consuming passion while viewing it more as a highly useful rhetorical target. He showed interest in buying arms from the U.S. while secretly concluding a deal with the Soviets. By now the British knew better and tried to drag the Americans off their high horse. But that was dismissed as special pleading.
Nasser was, of course, an Arab nationalist. But he was also an empire builder who saw America’s Arab allies—Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon—as dominoes to be knocked over on his path to regional hegemony. At the same time that Washington was propping up Iraq’sKing Faisal and Jordan’s King Hussein, Nasser was dispatching his agents to torpedo their rule. (He succeeded in Iraq and failed in Jordan.) The great irony was that while the United States was increasingly viewed as the enforcer of the global status quo, it was bestowing blessings on the man most determined to upset it.
The truth dawned—but slowly. When Nasser executed his master stroke, nationalizing the Suez Canal in July 1956—Mr. Doran calls it Egypt’s “declaration of independence”—Britain demanded that Washington join it and France in a war to regain a precious colonial-era prize. Ike demurred. “The whole Arab world would unite in opposition,” CIA director Allen Dulles advised. Readers today will reflexively think: If only George W. Bush had received the same advice before invading Iraq. Probably it was good advice. Yet Nasser, once spared by American non-intervention, would go on to stoke the forces of Arab nationalism and prosecute two more wars against Israel. Ike learned, as Messrs. Bush and Obama would learn decades later, that he could not put the U.S. on the right side of Arab public opinion.
“Ike’s Gamble” is a thoroughly researched, closely argued work of traditional diplomatic history, albeit enlivened by the occasional irreverent analogy to U.S.-British collaboration in Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. It brings us back to a time when America had real options in the Middle East, when diplomacy was mostly left up to the diplomats, and when Wise Men in Washington tried to do Wise Things. What are we to make of their failure? Mr. Doran tells us that Ike ultimately came to see Suez as his “major foreign policy mistake.” He should not have cut the legs out from under England and France, nor sided with Egypt against Israel.
Mr. Doran ends by re-running the tape loop of history, only this time with an already wised-up Ike. That Ike, he imagines, would have joined with his European allies “to smash the illusion of Nasser’s inevitable triumph” and thus discredit Nasser’s revolutionary pan-Arabism. Well, yes, and in retrospect George W. Bush would have done some nation building in Iraq, and Barack Obama would have taken the Islamic State much more seriously in 2014. Everyone is wise after the fact. But even hardheaded realists like Eisenhower sometimes get snookered, in part by their own wish for the world to be more amenable to American values, and American power, than it is. And nowhere do American leaders fall into that trap more than in the Middle East.
The inference one draws from “Ike’s Gamble” is not: Do nothing in the Middle East. When you are the United States, not doing is every bit as fateful a decision as doing. (See: Syria.) It is rather: Do not trust appealing strangers. (See: Ahmed Chalabi.) Do not try to be too clever. Lower your expectations. And adopt, as Mr. Doran writes in closing, “a tragic perspective.”
—Mr. Traub is the author, most recently, of “ John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit.”
Mr. Doran illuminates a narrative with which very few non-specialists will be familiar. His tale begins at the moment in the early 1950s when America was reaching its zenith. The United Kingdom was reluctantly acknowledging the end of empire, and the United States was filling the vacuum in the Middle East. Neither Eisenhower nor his fervently anti-communist secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, understood this transition in strictly geopolitical terms; both believed that the liberating American faith in national self-determination and consent of the governed would supplant Britain’s self-aggrandizing colonialism. Both morality and national interest dictated such a course. As Dulles said in a prime-time televised address in 1953: “We cannot afford to be distrusted by millions who could be sturdy friends of freedom.
The problem was that in order to do so, they had to sell out their closest ally. To British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Britain’s 80,000-man garrison in Suez was irrefutable proof that his nation remained an imperial force. But Eisenhower and Dulles took Nasser’s side in 1953-4 as he whittled away at British influence and demanded that Britain withdraw its forces. Unintimidated by his former wartime ally, Eisenhower brusquely advised Churchill to defer to “the very strong nationalist sentiments of the Egyptian Government and people” by agreeing to hand over control of the base. Churchill had loudly declared that he had not been elected prime minister to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire; having no choice, he now agreed to do just that.
Britain was one impediment to America’s grand bargain with Nasser; Israel was the other. Eisenhower, Dulles and State Department officials feared that the United States would never win Arab hearts and minds if it was seen as the ally of a nation that almost all Arabs reviled. The problem has hardly gone away over the past six decades. But while the American response today is to gently prod Israel to rein in the growth of illegal settlements, the answer in 1955 was to push Israel to make unilateral territorial concessions—and, remarkably, to present the plan to Nasser for his approval before disclosing it to the Israelis. Mr. Doran makes it clear that the anti-Semitism of the Washington elite converged with what seemed at the time to be perfectly sound strategic calculations.
But Eisenhower’s “gamble” was based on a delusion. Nasser was not an Egyptian George Washington or Moses, determined to lead his people out of colonial bondage and into a proud independence, though this witty and roguish figure did a fine job of playing those roles for gullible American diplomats. Mr. Doran shows that while Nasser claimed to be a moderate barely surviving the pressure of hard-liners, it was he who was pulling the strings. Nasser spoke of Israel as a consuming passion while viewing it more as a highly useful rhetorical target. He showed interest in buying arms from the U.S. while secretly concluding a deal with the Soviets. By now the British knew better and tried to drag the Americans off their high horse. But that was dismissed as special pleading.
Nasser was, of course, an Arab nationalist. But he was also an empire builder who saw America’s Arab allies—Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon—as dominoes to be knocked over on his path to regional hegemony. At the same time that Washington was propping up Iraq’sKing Faisal and Jordan’s King Hussein, Nasser was dispatching his agents to torpedo their rule. (He succeeded in Iraq and failed in Jordan.) The great irony was that while the United States was increasingly viewed as the enforcer of the global status quo, it was bestowing blessings on the man most determined to upset it.
The truth dawned—but slowly. When Nasser executed his master stroke, nationalizing the Suez Canal in July 1956—Mr. Doran calls it Egypt’s “declaration of independence”—Britain demanded that Washington join it and France in a war to regain a precious colonial-era prize. Ike demurred. “The whole Arab world would unite in opposition,” CIA director Allen Dulles advised. Readers today will reflexively think: If only George W. Bush had received the same advice before invading Iraq. Probably it was good advice. Yet Nasser, once spared by American non-intervention, would go on to stoke the forces of Arab nationalism and prosecute two more wars against Israel. Ike learned, as Messrs. Bush and Obama would learn decades later, that he could not put the U.S. on the right side of Arab public opinion.
“Ike’s Gamble” is a thoroughly researched, closely argued work of traditional diplomatic history, albeit enlivened by the occasional irreverent analogy to U.S.-British collaboration in Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. It brings us back to a time when America had real options in the Middle East, when diplomacy was mostly left up to the diplomats, and when Wise Men in Washington tried to do Wise Things. What are we to make of their failure? Mr. Doran tells us that Ike ultimately came to see Suez as his “major foreign policy mistake.” He should not have cut the legs out from under England and France, nor sided with Egypt against Israel.
Mr. Doran ends by re-running the tape loop of history, only this time with an already wised-up Ike. That Ike, he imagines, would have joined with his European allies “to smash the illusion of Nasser’s inevitable triumph” and thus discredit Nasser’s revolutionary pan-Arabism. Well, yes, and in retrospect George W. Bush would have done some nation building in Iraq, and Barack Obama would have taken the Islamic State much more seriously in 2014. Everyone is wise after the fact. But even hardheaded realists like Eisenhower sometimes get snookered, in part by their own wish for the world to be more amenable to American values, and American power, than it is. And nowhere do American leaders fall into that trap more than in the Middle East.
The inference one draws from “Ike’s Gamble” is not: Do nothing in the Middle East. When you are the United States, not doing is every bit as fateful a decision as doing. (See: Syria.) It is rather: Do not trust appealing strangers. (See: Ahmed Chalabi.) Do not try to be too clever. Lower your expectations. And adopt, as Mr. Doran writes in closing, “a tragic perspective.”
—Mr. Traub is the author, most recently, of “ John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit.”
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