Chappaquiddick pant suit sale. proceeds go to Clinton Foundation
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Makovsky sends advice to Trump regarding Iran. (See 1 below.)
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Phillips and I remain on the same page. (See 2 below.)
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Tobin helps The New York Times to Understand Israeli Politics as if they truly cared. (See 3 below.)
As long as Arabs, Muslims, Islamist Terrorists, Palstinians and The U.N. want to impose conditions that would lead to Israel's continued isolation and ultimate destruction there is no valid reason for Israelis to negotiate anything. Meanwhile settlements remain an excuse which the Palestinians continue to milk for continued aid.
Trump would be wise to cut contributions to The U.N, to the Palestinians and let the entire matter simmer. Before he gets bogged down in matters foreign he needs to stick to implementing his domestic agenda.
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Democrats met today and their obstruction plans have begun. If Trump believes he is going to get co-operation from the likes of Schumer, Pocahontas, Bernie and Pelosi he is making a mistake which will haunt him.
FDR went on the radio and said he was having trouble with Martin, Barton and Fish and kept at it until they buckled.
Trump needs to twitter he cannot drain the swamp as long as Schumer, Pocahontas, Bernie and Pelosi obstruct him and he should name the Democrat Senators who are up for re-election and seek their help. If he does not deliver, and quickly, he will become a Political Gulliver.
Politics is a very nasty,business and lamentably, the way to overcome and survive is to out nasty unless you have the personal skills of Reagan. Hard ball and power are the only things Schumer understands. As for Pelsoi she is beyond comprehending. Pocahontas and Bernie are light weights but they too can be make life miserable.
Schumer and Pelosi will put Party, Obamacare and obstruction before doing what is best for America. They do not give a fig about what those gun toting ,bible thumping deplorables voted for and expect. As for Obamacare, it was built upon a foundation of Obama lies so he could accomplish a pet objective and shove it down the throats of America on the premise he was taking care of the uninsured. No Republican voted for this fraud and now Democrats want to keep choking our nation at a cost that is proving crippling because they ultimately seek a government sponsored single payer program .
Would you want to go to The V.A for your medical care? The Democrats want you to get your medical care from a government system where no competition exists and which has proven to be a colossal calamity because Liberals love big government which controls your freedom. Liberals fear those who think for themselves.They distrust what The Founders created.
Yes, Liberals and socialists like Bernie do not trust the free market system which made America the most powerful and wealthy nation in the globe. Yes we were once great. Liberals want us to be beholden to big government and its Rube Goldberg solutions which fail more than succeed, to remain energy dependent because it weakens us, strengthens our enemies and placates Greens. Obama tells us Global Warming is more a threat than China, Russia, N Korea,Islamic terrorism and our own government. What has he been smoking?
If you think Reid was a snake wait til you are exposed to a few weeks of Schumer. He is sickening. (See 4 below.)
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The WSJ chimes in regarding the failed Republican effort to reform ethic slaps on the wrist. (See 5 below.)
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One of the better op ed writers praises one of the best - Thomas Sowell. (See 6 below.)
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Dick
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1) Five Ways for Trump to Put Tehran on Notice
The new administration can renegotiate the Iran nuclear deal from a position of strength.
As the bipartisan opponents of President Obama’s Iran nuclear agreement prepare to address its many shortcomings, they should beware of unwittingly repeating some of his mistakes.
Instead of relying on more sanctions to dismantle or renegotiate the deal, the most urgent need is restoring U.S. credibility and resolve in opposing Iranian aggression and reshaping the Middle East.
Two fundamental misjudgments led to the disastrous nuclear agreement. First, Mr. Obama eschewed credible military threats and relied on congressionally generated economic sanctions to pressure Iran to negotiate. Second, he focused only on Iran’s nuclear program, ignoring its malignant regional misconduct. Free of pressure and scrutiny, Tehran shaped the agreement’s terms and expanded its aggression and influence.
The current policy debate has ignored these mistakes. Instead, it is focused on using sanctions to enforce and improve the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran. This narrow approach is counterproductive. The agreement front-loaded Iran’s economic benefits. But it only mothballed elements of its nuclear program; it did not eradicate it.
The U.S. will need years to rebuild a robust international sanctions regime; Iran requires mere weeks to rebuild its nuclear program. Even if Iran remains within the agreement’s framework, it might respond to sanctions by escalating its regional aggression, exerting its own more immediate and dangerous form of leverage.
A proven necessary ingredient in dealing with Iran is a credible military threat. Two examples: Tehran suspended elements of its nuclear program in 2003-04 following the U.S. overthrow of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, and it never crossed Israel’s 2012 red line over its nuclear stockpile.
As the Trump administration considers Iran policy, including whether and how to enforce, renegotiate or cancel the nuclear agreement with Tehran, here are five policies it can implement to put Iran on notice and regain the strategic advantage:
First, instruct the Pentagon to update contingency plans for the use of force against Iran, including its nuclear facilities, especially in the event of a significant violation of, or withdrawal from, the nuclear agreement. This will communicate a new robust posture and prepare for what might be necessary.
Second, change the rules of engagement for U.S. naval vessels in the Persian Gulf. Provocative Iranian forces should no longer be tolerated but instead, as Mr. Trump stated in his first debate with Hillary Clinton, “shot out of the water.” The U.S. cannot hesitate to do this when the first such situation arises, as it certainly will. This will demonstrate credible resolve to Iran and other global powers, and it should contribute to improved Iranian behavior regionally as well as toward the agreement.
Third, boost the anti-Iran regional coalition. Instead of alienating traditional regional allies as Mr. Obama has done, we must embrace them and collaborate closely. This includes unapologetically supporting the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Iranian-backed Houthi insurgency in Yemen; increasing aid for Jordan; supporting Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi; and improving relations with Azerbaijan. It also includes bolstering support for Israel through raising U.S. military aid above the recent agreement, backing it strongly against Iran-supported Hamas and Hezbollah, and mitigating negative consequences of the recent U.N. Security Council resolution that Mr. Obama enabled, including by moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.
Fourth, announce plans to establish a regional missile-defense system—to include Israel and U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf and Eastern Europe, building on the ample infrastructure already in place. To neutralize Iran’s ballistic missile threat, which the nuclear agreement has effectively legalized, Mr. Trump should order that this antimissile shield shoot down any Iranian missiles, test-fired or otherwise.
Fifth, and more challenging, undercut the Iranian crescent forming from Tehran to Beirut. Iran dominates the capitals of Iraq and Syria, both failed artificial, multiethnic states created from the Ottoman Empire after World War I. The U.S. should double down on the post-World War I focus on self-determination and support new political entities that are emerging. In Iraq, that starts with an independent Kurdish state and stationing a U.S. military base there. In Syria, work toward creating Sunni, Alawite and Kurdish entities that could check each other perhaps as part of a confederation.
Sanctions without military credibility have little meaning. Alone they cannot stop Iran from flouting the nuclear deal or inflaming the region. But sanctions coupled with a focused strategy can change Tehran’s calculus. This could enable an eventual renegotiation of the disastrous agreement, or, should diplomacy fail, better position the U.S. and its allies to prevent a nuclear-weapons-capable Iran by other means. It could also transform the region in America’s favor.
Mr. Makovsky, a Pentagon official in the George W. Bush administration, is president and CEO of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (Jinsa).
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2)Will Obama become the agitator-in-chief?
Melanie Phillips, Times of London
Less than three weeks from now President Obama will leave office. One might assume that, as with his predecessors, he will take a back seat in public life, only surfacing to write his memoirs, rake in a few millions on the lecture circuit and work on his golf handicap.
This may be to misunderstand him as badly out of office as in it. After Donald Trump’s election, Mr Obama promised distraught Democrats that “next year Michelle and I are going to be right there with you . . . and we’re going to be busy, involved in the amazing stuff that we’ve been doing all these years before”.
Just vague aspirational waffle? Unlikely. For in his previous life Barack Obama was a community organiser. It sounds benign enough. Organising the community surely means doing good works to alleviate the hardship of the poor and disadvantaged? No.
The term “community organiser” has a specific meaning. It was coined by the radical Chicago activist Saul Alinsky, a Marxist who believed in capturing the culture as the most effective means of overturning western society.
The way to do this, he said, was through “people’s organisations” composed largely of discontented individuals who believed society was fundamentally unjust, and who would take their lead from trained community organisers. These organisers, taught Alinsky, should “rub raw the resentments of the people” and “agitate to the point of conflict” while pretending to be middle-class folk in suits.
Based on the premise that the revolution would come not through institutions but through the masses, the organisers’ role was to galvanise the mob to oppose every institution of the state. In his handbook of sedition, Rules for Radicals, Alinsky describes Lucifer as “the very first radical”.
Although he died in 1972, his influence over the Democratic Party remains enormous. In a letter to the Boston Globe in 2008, his son, L David Alinsky, said that every element of his father’s teaching had been present at that year’s Democratic convention: “. . . the crowd’s chanting of key phrases and names, the action on the spot of texting and phoning to show instant support and commitment to jump into the political battle, the rallying selections of music, the setting of the agenda by the power people”.
Two months later an Alinskyite radical, Barack Obama, was elected president of the United States.
Mr Obama had been trained as a community organiser by Alinskyite organisations. In the early 1990s he provided legal services and leadership training seminars for the Alinsky-style Association of Community Organisations for Reform Now (Acorn). Acorn was later accused of massive voter fraud during the 2008 election, particularly the falsification of voter registration cards.
In office Mr Obama constantly incited division between social groups. He claimed that low-income people were the victims of the wealthy, and backed racism charges against the police even though some of these were later shown to be false. Regularly invoking core American ideals, he simultaneously strove to transform American society.
As Alinsky’s son further observed, this was his father’s agenda to the letter. “Barack Obama’s training in Chicago by the great community organisers is showing its effectiveness,” he wrote.
After he was first elected president Mr Obama launched Organising for America, a formal infrastructure of activism built upon his campaign’s extensive database of supporters. In his second term, this turned into Organising for Action (OFA).
This vast database now has the potential to be the launch-pad for a direct challenge to democratic institutions.
After Mr Trump was elected president, Mr Obama told his OFA activists: “I’m giving you like a week and a half to get over it.” Then it would be time to “move forward not only to protect what we’ve accomplished, but also to see this as an opportunity” because “the network that you represent, you’re perfectly poised to do that. In other words, now is the time for some organising.”
In other words: agitating. On New Year’s Eve, OFA urged in one of its almost daily fundraising messages: “Across the country, OFA supporters and volunteers are already gearing up for the fights we’ll face in the next few months.”
Three days earlier it said: “We’ve been training the next generation of change-makers and community leaders and giving people the resources they’ll need to create change. And we’re not going to back down just because the fight has gotten tough.”
Shortly after Mr Trump’s victory, yet another OFA message read: “Now is the time to get in the ring and fight harder than we ever have before.”
The effect of such a climate of agitation extends much further than the Democratic Party. We’ve already seen it in the violent anti-Trump demonstrations and harassment of Republican voters; the Black Lives Matter riots with their calls for “dead cops” and the lynching of white people; the refusal of athletes to stand for the American national anthem.
This now has the potential for a permanent grassroots insurrection against the Trump administration involving many different constituencies. Who better to spearhead this in one form or another than America’s very own community organiser-in-chief, soon-to-be-ex President Obama?
For weekly updates on Melanie’s work please visit melaniephillips.com
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3)
Palestinians Hate Blue Israel Too
By Jonathan Tobin
A
For the mainstream media, explaining Israeli politics is difficult work. A country where the poor and disenfranchised immigrants from the Middle East have traditionally supported the party of the right (Likud) while the wealthy and the upper middle-class of largely European origin are the last strongholds of the political left does not translate easily into American political context. In the United States, political culture is rooted in very different concerns than those of the average Israeli, where security issues and attitudes toward the Arab world still dominate. The temptation to make flawed analogies, it seems, is still irresistible. That led to the New York Times’s attempt to ascribe reactions in Israel to Secretary of State John Kerry’s astonishing attack on the Jewish state last week to a divide between “red state” and “blue state” Israeli voters. The piece not only failed to effectively analyze the Israeli response to the Obama administration but also the reason why the Middle East conflict hasn’t been solved.
New Times Jerusalem bureau chief Peter Baker isn’t entirely wrong when he says that there is a stark divide between left and right in Israel. For some who live in secular and liberal Tel Aviv, what goes in Jerusalem and even along the border with Gaza–let alone West Bank settlements–has sometimes been of little interest. I can recall conversing with Tel Aviv residents about a visit to Sderot in the south eight years ago, which at the time was besieged by Palestinian missile fire, in which they reacted as if I was speaking of what was happening in Afghanistan. The disconnect between the minority who blame their own country for the lack of peace and the majority who correctly see the problem as the function of Palestinian intransigence is great, even if Hamas’s 2014 missile attacks on the secular metropolis erased some of the left’s complacency.
Yet the left-wing establishment that once dominated Israeli politics and society was effectively marginalized by the collapse of the peace process in the carnage of the second intifada. In the wake of the Palestinians’ refusal of an offer of statehood from the last Labor-led government in 2000, the even split between left and right that had characterized Israeli politics since the 1970s was transformed into a new reality in which power rested with a dominant right and an ever-changing roster of centrist parties. The fact that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now serving his third consecutive term in power and that the only viable alternative comes from Yair Lapid of the centrist Yesh Atid Party speaks volumes about how little influence leftist organs like Haaretz have, even as it continues to support attacks on the Jewish state from foreign critics like Kerry.
Even Baker had to acknowledge his red state/blue state analogy falls short because of the decline of the left. Many liberal Israelis took umbrage at Kerry’s speech just as they were appalled by Obama’s Cairo speech in 2009. The one-sided, anti-Israel bias of both speeches, as well as the way Kerry and Obama have worked hard to treat Jewish Jerusalem as being as much of an illegal settlement as the most remote West Bank hilltop settlement, discredited the administration in the eyes of many Israelis. That, and Obama’s appeasement of Iran, only strengthened Netanyahu’s continued hold on power.
There’s a broader problem with the red and blue story line. The Islamists of Hamas make no distinction between the settlers that Obama let the UN brand as outlaws and those blue state Israelis lounging in Tel Aviv cafes sniping at Netanyahu. They want them all dead. The moderates of Fatah sometimes pay lip service to a two-state solution. But when pressed to say the words that would mean they are giving up the war against Zionism for good–a recognition of the legitimacy of a Jewish state, no matter where its borders might be drawn–they also still refuse and continue to praise terrorists and foment hatred of Israelis and Jews that fuels violence.
Whether or not they oppose settlements or embrace a two-state solution, the vast majority of Israelis understand that what happened at the UN was an effort to strip their country of any leverage it might have in the peace talks the Palestinians refuse to rejoin. Whether or not they like Netanyahu, a clear majority know that Palestinians have repeatedly rejected peace and still have a conception of national identity that makes peace impossible for the present. Israeli society is split along religious, economic, security, and political fault lines. But when placed in the context of Palestinian hate, international anti-Semitism and Obama’s betrayal, the cultural divide between right and left is not quite as great as Israel’s critics would have us believe.
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4) Schumer Slogan: Repealing Obamacare Will 'Make America Sick Again'
By Tyler O'Neil
In a public relations move worthy of a George Orwell novel, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer twisted President-elect Donald Trump's famous slogan in an attempt to block efforts to repeal and replace the disastrous and horridly misnamed Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare).
In an interview with Politico, New York Senator Schumer announced that he has briefed his colleagues on a new messaging campaign to launch the catchphrase "Make America Sick Again." Beginning on January 15, Democrats will launch health care-themed rallies across the country, trying to brand Republicans as anti-health care for wishing to repeal Obamacare.
"Less health care and it will cost more," Schumer said Tuesday. He warned that repealing Obamacare "will create chaos. Because you cannot repeal a plan and put nothing in its place. It doesn't matter if you say the repeal won't take place for year [sic] or two years."
Democrats are launching an all-out effort to salvage Obamacare, with President Obama coming to Capitol Hill Wednesday to rally his party behind the law. At the same time, Vice President-elect Mike Pence is meeting with Republicans about rolling it back.
Contrary to Schumer, Republicans do indeed have plans to replace Obamacare, and here is the one that seems most likely.
Displaying his political savvy, the Senate minority leader declared that Democrats don't just care about Obama's health care law. "Our message is not just on Obamacare. Our message is don't cut health care," Shumer said. "Medicare. Medicaid. Obamacare."
This is smart messaging, because a great deal of Obamacare focused on expanding Medicaid, a program which suffers from massive fraud. Any plan to dismantle Obama's health care law would likely cost Medicaid in the meantime — a benefit for taxpayers but a public relations struggle. Democrats could use this aspect of reform to brand Republicans as evil lovers of the rich who would remove health care from the poor.
Even though Senate Democrats face a challenging election map in 2018, Schumer was confident that his colleagues would remain steadfast in opposing Republican plans to repeal and replace Obamacare.
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5) Fake Ethics Reform Fiasco
The House GOP shows it will too easily bend to liberals—and Trump.
The 115th Congress flopped into Washington on Tuesday with House Republicans proposing and then dropping marginal changes to an internal ethics office. The reversal is an unforced political error, but the GOP is right that the investigative body has the power to destroy reputations without due process.
By the way, Paul Ryan was re-elected Speaker Tuesday with one GOP defection, while Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi lost four Democrats. But that news was dwarfed as the House considered rules for the new Congress, and Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte offered an amendment to restructure the Office of Congressional Ethics.
The office is composed of political grandees, often former Members, and it has no prosecutorial power. But it conducts investigations into Members or staffers and makes recommendations to the House Ethics Committee. The proposal limited what information can be released to the public and barred the committee from having a press secretary. Also banned: anonymous tips.
Mr. Ryan and other House leaders opposed the rule as badly timed. But the rank and file adopted the idea Monday night anyway, only to dump it on Tuesday after denunciations from the Democratic-media complex. The left rounded up callers to deluge Republican switchboards for “gutting” the outfit. Donald Trump couldn’t resist piling on with a pair of tweets: “With all that Congress has to work on, do they really have to make the weakening of the Independent Ethics Watchdog, as unfair as it may be, their number one act and priority.”
The reality is that the office is at best redundant and perhaps worse. Democrats created the office in 2008 to deflect attention from a crush of corruption scandals, including charges against at least three Members. The left is pitching the place as an essential institution of self-government, but the Senate manages to function without a similar office.
Anonymous complaints are especially insidious, as subjects of an investigation may not know who is accusing them—and the accuser may never have to press his case. Nixing the communications director is also worthy: A press secretary is nothing but a designated leaker. The office is a great tool for government “watchdog” groups that are progressives posing as transparency enthusiasts, which renders the proceedings even less fair.As it is, the ethics office is a roving investigator that can publish reports with details that may not be accurate and can damage a reputation with little or no proof of guilt. Evidence of wrongdoing in travel, campaign finances and other matters can be handled by the House Ethics Committee, and if necessary law-enforcement agencies. Both are politically accountable, unlike the independent office.
The burning question in the media has been whether Mr. Trump or public outcry deserve credit for the GOP’s about-face. In any case, House Republicans will pay a political price for trying, then failing, to rush through ethics changes—after running on draining the D.C. swamp. By caving so precipitously at the first sign of opposition, they’ve also invited more such pressure campaigns.
The upshot is an embarrassing start for a new GOP Congress that is supposed to be stalwart for pursuing conservative reform no matter the opposition. Progressives are elated that their Trump “resistance” project notched a victory and will continue the fact-free outrage campaigns. If you think the political pressure is intense on ethics rules, wait until the left completes its nationwide talent search for the person most harmed by the GOP’s health-care proposals. Mr. Trump will also figure he can rout any opposition with a tweet, not that he’s known for restraint.
The shame is that a review of the ethics office is overdue, much as due-process rights have suffered under the Obama Administration—from college campus show trials to bankrupting legal companies. Maybe Congress can restore its own due-process guarantees after it does something for everyone else’s.
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6)
Tom Sowell, a Fearless Contrarian, Puts Down the Pen
The 86-year-old economist asked questions others didn’t and wrote the answers in plain English.
Mr. Sowell writes in “plain English,” as he likes to put it, which in and of itself distinguishes him from most intellectuals, who seem allergic to accessible prose. He wants you to understand what he’s saying, not to be impressed with his vocabulary. He trained in economics at the University of Chicago, where professors stressed empiricism and measurement through statistics, so data carry weight with him. The numbers don’t lie, and Mr. Sowell is a numbers guy. He goes where the data lead him, and he accepts the findings, however discomfiting or politically incorrect. His readers appreciate the intellectual honesty and integrity. If you don’t have the data to back up what you’re saying, or if you’re trying to massage the evidence to get a result you prefer, better to avoid arguing with Mr. Sowell.
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