Will lack of water drown Iran's leaders? (See 1 below.)
=====================
The appointment of a special counsel could prove to be a bigger plus than a negative one because hopefully it takes the issue off the front page and allows the Trump Administration to move forward with its legislative agenda.
Whether it restrains those in the opposition party and other anti-Trumpers remains to be seen but it should hem them in for a while.
A lot will depend upon the competency and professional objectivity of the appointee who seems to fill the requisite demands as being a man of integrity with no ax to grind one way or the other.
However, if Mueller turns out to be another Patrick Fitzgerald, who was appointed by Comey, then some more totally innocent people will be incarcerated and more gum shoe tragedies will have been allowed to be perpetrated by the heavy hand of government bureaucrats.
The risk remains Mueller's investigation could morph into a wider range of probing, take a very long time and the conclusion could still be greeted with disapproval because he could conclude there is no there, there which would not serve the demonic desire and goal of the anti-Trump crowd.
The investigation might expand into other areas where multitude breaking of laws occurred during the Obama Administration and were never appropriately pursued or resolved but I doubt that will happen.
Obama, for all his misdeeds was never threatened in the same manner or excoriated by the mass media as Trump.
Clinton was actively engaged in acts that were legally speaking highly questionable and no investigation.
So the Democrats have won round one but I believe, and have no evidence, they will lose round two and the bout because I do not believe Trump was involved in collusion with Putin to get elected..I do believe some of Trump's campaign aides had Russian involvement prior to becoming engaged and maybe even remained engaged during the campaign.
I have no doubt Russia tried to weigh in regarding our election because governments do this and Obama certainly was engaged up to his armpits in trying to defeat Netanyahu.
What is most disturbing is that Obama and Clinton and some of their appointees will never be investigated and thus the IRS, Benghazi, The Iran Deal, Atty. General's Holder and Lynch and other questionable episodes, lies and possible breaking of laws will be allowed to be dumped into the dust bin of history.
At least Mueller's coming investigation should tamp down some of the despicable cacophony from the anti-Trumpers and perhaps Trump and members of his party will be able to come forth and pass needed legislation to get America's train back on track so the economy can grow, jobs will return and more deserving Americans will be able to return to work.
I am not surprised at Mueller's appointment because, as I said in previous memos, Republicans are too patrician and incapable of hanging tough, Trump has proven to be his own worst enemy and being left alone to take on the mass media, the united opposition from the opposing party, the anti-Trumpers would prove to be more than even a president should undertake successfully.
What Mueller's appointment does is to continue the acceptance that when sand is thrown in the gears of government and enough yell collusion and worse ,even in the face of no legal basis, government by and for the people has been given another unwanted blow because it has been taken out of the hands of the accountable elected.
So stay tuned and perhaps we might learn the outcome in several years. Markets should respond to the announcement in a favorite manner but the investigation will remain a cloud hanging over all of us and thus, Wall Street.
++++++++++++
Reaction to Mueller.'s appointment. (See 2 below.)
Why The Wall Street Journal's editorial staff and Dershowitz believe the appointment of a special counsel is a mistake and the Journal call for the release of the Comey Tapes. (See 2a, 2b and 2c below.)
Daniel Henninger explains why it is time to let Trump be Trump rather than placing impediments in his way of connecting with the people. There is much to be said in support of what Henninger has concluded. After all, he writes and poses, we knew what we were getting in electing Trump, warts and all, so why not let him perform in concert with our expectations. (See 2d below.)
Tobin asks will Jewish supporters of Trump begin to shy away from their support.? I have no doubt there are those those, regardless of their religion, that when the heat rises some get weak knees because they do not like having to defend someone under fire. (See 2e below.)
This conservative, who also happens to be Jewish, is willing to support Trump as long as he moves in the direction I expect when it comes to rebuilding our military, standing up to and opposing Islamic terrorism, blunting Russia and China's expansionary desires and efforts and opposes Iran and N Korea's nuclear ambitions. I also expect him to work at rebuilding our infrastructure, reforming our tax laws and come up with a rational health program that includes some of the positive features of Obamacare, few as they might have been,that is affordable, limits government's involvement. Finally I expect him to address social issues in a manner that is based on common sense and takes us away from and does not support the failures of progressive and politically correct nonsense.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Commentary on Bezos' management and ownership of WaPo and the growth in fake news reporting.. (See 3 below.)
+++++++++++++++++
Campus lunacy. (See 4 below.)
======================
Dick
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1) Iran is having presidential elections this Friday. While most voters in Iran are focused on the economy or on Iran’s engagement with the world, I argue in this Washington Post Op-Ed that due to corruption and mismanagement, Iran is at risk of grievous water crises that will lead to social upheaval and economic consequences even more dire than the impact of sanctions. Pointing out the malign influence of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) on Iranian society was a central point of the column.
Forget the politics. Iran has bigger problems.
By Seth M. Siegel
Seth M. Siegel is author of “Let There Be Water: Israel’s Solution for a Water-Starved World.”
On May 19, Iran goes to the polls to select a new president. So far the campaign has been dominated by the economy. Unemployment is high, and oil prices are low. The lifting of sanctions following Tehran’s nuclear agreement with the West has yet to yield benefits. Yet the effect of sanctions — or whether the next president is a hard-liner or a relative moderate — is secondary to the largest long-term threat to Iran’s stability.
Due to gross water mismanagement and its ruinous impact on the country, Iran faces the worst water future of any industrialized nation. After the fall of the shah in 1979, water policy became a victim of bad governance and corruption, putting the country on what may be an irreversible path to environmental doom and disruption that owes nothing to sanctions or years of war with its neighbors.
Beginning in 1987, as the war with Iraq was ending, the special military force of the Iranian regime — the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) — was given a special perk. Among other strangleholds on the Iranian economy, IRGC-owned companies, including Khatam al-Anbia, its construction arm, were given control over major engineering projects throughout the country.
Recklessly, these companies began damming major rivers, changing the historical water flows of Iran. This was done to give water preferences to powerful landowners and favored ethnic communities while also transferring billions from the public treasury to IRGC leaders’ accounts. In all, since the 1979 revolution, more than 600 dam projects have been completed, contrasted with 13 dams built in Iran prior to the shah’s fall.
As the IRGC grew richer and more powerful, this same military force that today exerts influence in Syria, Yemen and elsewhere silenced farmers and environmentalists who protested river diversions by labeling them counter-revolutionaries, a crime punishable by harsh imprisonment. With its hands on the levers of power and its leaders’ pockets being filled from government accounts for these projects, no one has been able to stop these ventures.
At the same time, the government needed farmers to grow food — and pragmatically had no interest in turning them into enemies of the state. The regime turned a blind eye as growers drilled wells without controls or concerns about sustainability, giving themselves all of the groundwater they wanted. With fuel long heavily subsidized in Iran, farmers turned on their diesel pumps, and often left them on, even when fields didn’t need irrigating.
After a few years of such environmental abuse of dammed rivers and over-drafted groundwater, aquifers began to go dry and lakes shriveled. Iran’s once massive Lake Urmia, until recently 2,000-square-mile expanse, contracted 90 percent between 1985 and 2015, creating cascading regional environmental problems. Other surface water resources experienced similar shrinkage and ecological consequences.
With farmland ruined, topsoil blown away and insufficient water to grow crops, millions of farmers and herders have left the countryside to live in dismal conditions in Iran’s growing cities. Meanwhile, deserts have also expanded, and the environmental damage to the country continues.
All of this led former Iranian agriculture minister Issa Kalantari to issue a report in 2015 stating that in less than 25 years as many as 50 million Iranians — Iran’s current population is approximately 83 million — will need to be relocated. Of all the injustices and miseries that the Islamic revolution may have visited on the Iranian people — from human rights abuses to large-scale corruption to the destruction of Iran’s natural environment — turning 60 percent of the country’s citizens into internal refugees would be the cruelest of all.
Ironically, the regime seems to think that the solution for the current water crisis may be found in yet more of the same corruption-based engineering projects. More IRGC-led and government-financed water projects are afoot to redirect yet other rivers.
Farmers in Iran lead the world in inefficient use of water. Some 90 percent of Iran’s freshwater is used for agriculture. By contrast, the United States uses about 70 percent, closer to the global norm. Iran’s farmers can be as efficient as farmers elsewhere if they adopt and follow better crop rotations, incentives to save water, reuse of highly treated sewage for irrigation and use of drip irrigation to eliminate the loss of water to evaporation, among other techniques. But first, the Iranian regime, which tightly controls the nation’s political life, will need to demand that farmers give up what they have come to see as an entitlement and which the regime exploits for political gain: all of the free or cheap water a farmer could want.
Sooner or later, the music will stop. Mother Nature is forgiving only up to a point. Once aquifers are pumped dry and begin collapsing on themselves, there is no engineering project — corrupt or otherwise — that can save them. The presidential election won’t change any of that. Reining in the IRGC and reallocating the country’s water is, like much else, not in the hands of Iran’s president. The supreme leader will have to take on a system created under his less-than-supreme leadership.
Seth M. Siegel is author of “Let There Be Water: Israel’s Solution for a Water-Starved World.”
On May 19, Iran goes to the polls to select a new president. So far the campaign has been dominated by the economy. Unemployment is high, and oil prices are low. The lifting of sanctions following Tehran’s nuclear agreement with the West has yet to yield benefits. Yet the effect of sanctions — or whether the next president is a hard-liner or a relative moderate — is secondary to the largest long-term threat to Iran’s stability.
Due to gross water mismanagement and its ruinous impact on the country, Iran faces the worst water future of any industrialized nation. After the fall of the shah in 1979, water policy became a victim of bad governance and corruption, putting the country on what may be an irreversible path to environmental doom and disruption that owes nothing to sanctions or years of war with its neighbors.
Beginning in 1987, as the war with Iraq was ending, the special military force of the Iranian regime — the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) — was given a special perk. Among other strangleholds on the Iranian economy, IRGC-owned companies, including Khatam al-Anbia, its construction arm, were given control over major engineering projects throughout the country.
Recklessly, these companies began damming major rivers, changing the historical water flows of Iran. This was done to give water preferences to powerful landowners and favored ethnic communities while also transferring billions from the public treasury to IRGC leaders’ accounts. In all, since the 1979 revolution, more than 600 dam projects have been completed, contrasted with 13 dams built in Iran prior to the shah’s fall.
As the IRGC grew richer and more powerful, this same military force that today exerts influence in Syria, Yemen and elsewhere silenced farmers and environmentalists who protested river diversions by labeling them counter-revolutionaries, a crime punishable by harsh imprisonment. With its hands on the levers of power and its leaders’ pockets being filled from government accounts for these projects, no one has been able to stop these ventures.
At the same time, the government needed farmers to grow food — and pragmatically had no interest in turning them into enemies of the state. The regime turned a blind eye as growers drilled wells without controls or concerns about sustainability, giving themselves all of the groundwater they wanted. With fuel long heavily subsidized in Iran, farmers turned on their diesel pumps, and often left them on, even when fields didn’t need irrigating.
After a few years of such environmental abuse of dammed rivers and over-drafted groundwater, aquifers began to go dry and lakes shriveled. Iran’s once massive Lake Urmia, until recently 2,000-square-mile expanse, contracted 90 percent between 1985 and 2015, creating cascading regional environmental problems. Other surface water resources experienced similar shrinkage and ecological consequences.
With farmland ruined, topsoil blown away and insufficient water to grow crops, millions of farmers and herders have left the countryside to live in dismal conditions in Iran’s growing cities. Meanwhile, deserts have also expanded, and the environmental damage to the country continues.
All of this led former Iranian agriculture minister Issa Kalantari to issue a report in 2015 stating that in less than 25 years as many as 50 million Iranians — Iran’s current population is approximately 83 million — will need to be relocated. Of all the injustices and miseries that the Islamic revolution may have visited on the Iranian people — from human rights abuses to large-scale corruption to the destruction of Iran’s natural environment — turning 60 percent of the country’s citizens into internal refugees would be the cruelest of all.
Ironically, the regime seems to think that the solution for the current water crisis may be found in yet more of the same corruption-based engineering projects. More IRGC-led and government-financed water projects are afoot to redirect yet other rivers.
Farmers in Iran lead the world in inefficient use of water. Some 90 percent of Iran’s freshwater is used for agriculture. By contrast, the United States uses about 70 percent, closer to the global norm. Iran’s farmers can be as efficient as farmers elsewhere if they adopt and follow better crop rotations, incentives to save water, reuse of highly treated sewage for irrigation and use of drip irrigation to eliminate the loss of water to evaporation, among other techniques. But first, the Iranian regime, which tightly controls the nation’s political life, will need to demand that farmers give up what they have come to see as an entitlement and which the regime exploits for political gain: all of the free or cheap water a farmer could want.
Sooner or later, the music will stop. Mother Nature is forgiving only up to a point. Once aquifers are pumped dry and begin collapsing on themselves, there is no engineering project — corrupt or otherwise — that can save them. The presidential election won’t change any of that. Reining in the IRGC and reallocating the country’s water is, like much else, not in the hands of Iran’s president. The supreme leader will have to take on a system created under his less-than-supreme leadership.
2) Rosenstein Names Former FBI Director Robert Mueller to head Russia probe
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to oversee the probe of Russian meddling in the U.S. election, a move that left members of Congress stunned and President Trump vowing “no collusion” will be dug up.
Last night’s appointment came as FBI Director James B. Comey was asked to testify before the House Oversight Committee Wednesday in what could be the first of several appearances before House and Senate lawmakers.
Lawmakers are after more information about Comey’s encounters with Trump, including reports the president pressed him to drop the bureau’s investigation into ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn.
The news hit on a day when the Dow had its worst showing since last September, shedding 370 points. It also triggered talk of Republicans shelving tax reform until 2018 due to the political storm.
GOP U.S. Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan said if it turns out to be true that Trump pressured Comey to end his probe of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials during the election, it would warrant impeachment. Amash: Trump could face impeachment over Comey memo
Meanwhile, some Democrats are toying with the idea of poll-testing the public’s views on impeachment, according to McClatchy News.
Trump’s firing of Comey last week sparked a cascade of events that have mired the White House in controversy, causing congressional Democrats to ratchet up their demands for an independent investigation into Russian interference, including Trump’s conversations with Comey and Trump’s decision to disclose highly classified information to Russian officials at the White House last week.
Republican U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona said the controversy had reached “Watergate size and scale” during a Tuesday night GOP dinner. Last night, he tweeted that Mueller “is a great choice for special counsel — confident he’ll fully investigate all aspects of Russia’s interference in our election.”
But Trump is insisting that Mueller — who was appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — won’t find anything.
“As I have stated many times, a thorough investigation will confirm what we already know — there was no collusion between my campaign and any foreign entity,” the president said in a statement last night.
“I look forward to this matter concluding quickly. In the meantime, I will never stop fighting for the people and the issues that matter most to the future of our country.”
Mueller will be able to name anyone to his staff and subpoena records and bring criminal charges. And there is no expiration date for his authority.
Special counsel is a relatively recent term, replacing special prosecutors and independent counsels. Patrick Fitzgerald, the former U.S. attorney appointed to investigate the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, was one. Ken Starr, a special prosecutor, probed former President Bill Clinton’s Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky scandals.
Republican House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz of Utah called Mueller a “great selection. Impeccable credentials. Should be widely accepted.”
Bay State U.S. Sen. Edward J. Markey cheered Mueller’s appointment, but said it was not enough.
“We must also ensure that President Trump does no additional damage to U.S. national security in his dealings with Russia,” said Markey, while also calling on the Trump administration to release transcripts of the president’s meeting last week with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, as well as Comey’s memos from the FBI.
House Speaker Paul Ryan cautioned that “there’s clearly a lot of politics being played.
“Our job,” he said, “is to get the facts and to be sober about doing that.”
2a) The Special Counsel Mistake
Rosenstein bends to political pressure, and here we go again.
Democrats and their media allies finally got their man. After weeks of political pressure, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein blinked late Wednesday and announced that he has named a special counsel to investigate Russian attempts to influence the 2016 presidential election. These expeditions rarely end well for anyone, and Democrats are hoping this one will bedevil the Trump Administration for the next four years.
“My decision is not a finding that crimes have been committed or that any prosecution is warranted,” said Mr. Rosenstein, which is nice but irrelevant. With Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused from the Russia probe, Mr. Rosenstein appointed former FBI director Robert Mueller III, who will now have unlimited time and resources to investigate more or less anything and anyone he wants.
While the decision will provide some short-term political relief, not least for Mr. Rosenstein, it also opens up years of political risk to the Trump Administration with no guarantee that the public will end up with any better understanding of what really happened.
The problem with special counsels, as we’ve learned time and again, is that they are by definition all but politically unaccountable. While technically Mr. Rosenstein could fire Mr. Mueller if he goes too far, the manner of his appointment and the subject he’s investigating make him de facto untouchable even if he becomes an abusive Javert like Patrick Fitzgerald during the George W. Bush Administration.
What the country really needs is a full accounting of how the Russians tried to influence the election and whether any Americans assisted them. That is fundamentally a counterintelligence investigation, but Mr. Mueller will be under pressure to bring criminal indictments of some kind to justify his existence. He’ll also no doubt bring on young attorneys who will savor the opportunity to make their reputation on such a high-profile investigation.
Mr. Mueller has experience in counterintelligence and at 72 years old has nothing to prove. But he is also a long-time Washington player close to the FBI whose director was recently fired, and he is highly attuned to the political winds. As they say in Washington, lawyer up.
2b) Alan Dershowitz on Mueller: 'Not Such a Good Thing' for American Public
Former FBI Director Robert Mueller's appointment Wednesday as special counsel to the Russia investigation is "another self-inflicted wound" by the Trump administration and is "not such a good thing" for the American public, Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz said.
He referenced news reports that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was angered at being blamed for James Comey's firing as FBI director last week by President Donald Trump.
"When the president blamed Rod Rosenstein for the decision to fire Comey, Rod Rosenstein made himself unfireable," he told Anderson Cooper on CNN. "He became the most powerful person, if not in Washington in the Justice Department."
Rosenstein appointed Mueller, 72, who headed the FBI during 9/11, to oversee the agency's investigation into alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Despite Mueller's stellar reputation in intelligence circles, Dershowitz described the appointment as "a mixed blessing.
"For the American public, it's not such a good thing," he explained. "We probably won't learn anything from this investigation.
"It's going to be in secret. We will never hear from a witness.
"At the end, we will either hear either two words – 'no indictment' – or we will hear 'an indictment.'"
He called for an independent commission – "to the extent that we want to know what really went on" – because it "would have been much better for the American public.
"President Trump probably could have avoided a special prosecutor if he had pressed for an independent investigatory commission earlier."
Dershowitz also cited another limitation involving Mueller's investigation.
"It's very likely no crimes occurred," he told Cooper. "If there was contact between the Russians and the administration, it might be a terrible, terrible thing – but it wouldn't be a crime.
"So, Mueller wouldn't have jurisdiction to look into that. He can't generally look into things that might be politically bad or morally bad.
"He is focused," Dershowitz emphasized before referring to the main character of "Moby Dick," the 1851 classic by Herman Melville. "He is Ahab, looking at that white whale.
"He either gets the whale or he doesn't get the whale," the retired professor said. "He doesn't look at the entire seascape."
2c) Release the Comey Tapes
Why didn’t the former FBI director resign in February?
The leak Tuesday of James Comey’s notes of a February conversation with Donald Trump is a classic of the former FBI director’s operating method that puts the Trump Presidency in peril and raises serious ethical questions about Mr. Comey’s behavior. Let’s step back from the immediate furor and examine the legal and political merits.
According to Mr. Comey’s memo to himself, Mr. Trump asked Mr. Comey in a one-on-one Oval Office meeting to “let this go,” referring to any investigation of former National Security AdviserMichael Flynn. “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” says the memo, parts of which were read to the New York Times by a Comey associate. “He is a good guy.”
The White House issued a statement denying Mr. Comey’s account of the meeting, adding that “the president has never asked Mr. Comey or anyone else to end any investigation, including any investigation involving General Flynn.” Mr. Trump’s many enemies are nonetheless calling this obstruction of justice, and perhaps grounds for impeachment.
The first question is how this squares with Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe’s testimony last week that there has been no attempt to interfere with the FBI’s Russia probe. The Times reports that Mr. Comey spread word among his colleagues of his Trump conversation, and Mr. McCabe is a Comey loyalist. Perhaps a Flynn criminal probe is separate from the Russia-Trump investigation, but it isn’t clear what Mr. Trump knew in February.
The more important issue is why Mr. Comey failed to inform senior Justice officials and resign immediately after the conversation. If he really thought Mr. Trump was attempting to obstruct justice, the director knows he had a legal obligation to report it immediately. He certainly had a moral duty to resign and go public with his reasons.
Yet the Times reports that Mr. Comey merely wrote the notes to himself and informed a few others. One explanation is that perhaps Mr. Comey didn’t view Mr. Trump’s comments as amounting to obstruction.
Intent is crucial to proving obstruction, and without listening to the conversation it’s impossible to know the context and tenor of Mr. Trump’s “let it go” comment. Mr. Trump might be guilty of obstruction if he thought Mr. Flynn knew something damaging about Mr. Trump, but not if he was making a general remark to give the guy a break.
Another possibility is that Mr. Comey viewed the notes as a form of political insurance that could be useful in a future controversy. By not resigning but quietly spreading word among colleagues, Mr. Comey was laying down evidence that he could use to protect his job or retaliate if Mr. Trump did fire him.
The leak of Mr. Comey’s notes suggests that he or his allies are now calling on that insurance. Such behavior fits Mr. Comey’s habit over the years of putting his personal political standing above other priorities. And it echoes uncomfortably of the way J. Edgar Hoover used information he collected to protect himself against presidential accountability.
All of this will now be investigated by Congress, and Mr. Comey has been invited to testify. Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, rightly wants to examine all of Mr. Comey’s notes about his February conversation, and any subpoena should be comprehensive. Leaks can often be selective but questions that touch on presidential obstruction need the full record.
The White House should also be forthcoming with any records of the meeting, including audio tapes. Mr. Trump hinted that recordings might exist when he tweeted Friday that “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”
The White House has since refused to say if Mr. Trump has taped visitors to the Oval Office, but that evasion won’t wash. If tapes exist, the White House should release them immediately. The President has nothing to fear if the White House denial is accurate. If the tapes don’t exist, Mr. Trump’s trolling will look even dumber than usual.
Mr. Trump was foolish even to discuss the Russia probe with Mr. Comey. Perhaps this was due to Mr. Trump’s naivete rather than an attempt to block an investigation, but even a rookie should know to seek legal guidance before blundering into matters so fraught with political risk. After Mr. Comey’s performance in 2016, Mr. Trump should also have known he needed to name a new FBI director in January, as some of us advised. History might have been different.
The tragedy is that all of this has put the larger Trump reform agenda in jeopardy. Stocks took a beating Wednesday as investors assessed the possibility that Mr. Trump has sabotaged his own challenge to the Washington status quo. If Mr. Comey is out for revenge for his belated dismissal, Mr. Trump’s best defense is to get the facts out as quickly as possible.
2d) Let Trump Be Trump
The president should cut out the middle men and be his own Messenger-in-Chief.
By Daniel Henninger
After the past two weeks, one must ask: How many parallel universes can the U.S. political system endure?
Let us enumerate the celestial bodies traveling along independent orbits just now: Donald Trump, Sean Spicer, the Beltway press chorus, the White House’s Borgia factions, 2018’s at-risk congressional Republicans, the Schumer Democrats, the mosquito clouds of social media, and the various people working in what little exists so far of the Trump government.
One more parallel universe deserves mention: the Trump vote, which decided the 2016 election. Oh, them.
The Trump vote sits out in the country watching the Washington spectacle of all things Comey, all things Russian, rumors of White House firings, and the president’s tweetstorms.
Polls suggest most Trump voters aren’t much moved by these events. After surviving the 2016 election, the Trump voter remains fixed on achieving the Trump agenda—the economy, health care, taxes, education, America’s global standing, financial reform, immigration, infrastructure, trade. They are willing to put up with a lot, because they know that President Donald J. Trump is the only vessel they’ve got.
Trump voters, however, should not underestimate the dangers of the current Washington circus. It isn’t a sideshow. It could pull down him and them.
If Republicans running in 23 House districts carried by Hillary Clinton, or districts barely carried by Mr. Trump, distance themselves from the White-House mayhem, vote margins for the Trump legislative agenda will be at risk. Wednesday’s down stock market was a canary in that mineshaft.
If Democrats win back the House in 2018, they will commence impeachment proceedings against Mr. Trump and his presidency will lose its ability to function for half its term.
Something’s gotta give in Washington. It’s not going to be Donald Trump.
The rumors of a White House shake-up include the suggestion that Mr. Trump may fire Sean Spicer, Reince Priebus, communications director Mike Dubke, counsel Don McGahn and consigliere Steve Bannon. What difference would that make?
No conceivable chief of staff would sign on now without a commitment from the president of full control over White House operations and messaging. Donald Trump won’t cede that. He believes what he is doing is fine, as he’s said in multiple interviews. So let’s consider something completely different.
There is a reality at the center of this matter that has to be faced: Donald Trump doesn’t like intermediaries. He abhors anything that gets between him and the public. The problem is not Sean Spicer’s performance as press secretary. The problem is positioning anything between Donald Trump’s mind and the outside world.
When Mr. Trump says he is moving too fast and doing too much for any of his staff to keep up, we should take him at his word. He wants direct access. So, create a system that gives him exactly that.
The answer is to cut out the middlemen. Let Trump be Trump.
Donald Trump should serve as his own press secretary and maybe his own chief of staff. I would even propose that the Trump presidency go live to the world, with a camera crew recording the president and his moment-to-moment thoughts in real time every day. President Trump as messenger in chief.
A month ago, this proposal would have been read as satire. But it is now close to the manifest reality of the Trump White House.
If Mr. Trump says or tweets something that causes a stir, such as pulling out of Nafta, let him talk to reporters on his terms to explain what he meant. If he changes his mind in minutes, hours or days, he can turn to the real-time camera and do it. But he takes responsibility for the Trump message.
Mr. Trump managing the message flow himself won’t eliminate all the static, but it would remove the press spending days pounding intermediaries like Sean Spicer to produce answers the president hasn’t shared with his people or isn’t ready to share. If the Trump presidency is going to produce static on a scale of 1 to 100, why not live with his 50 rather than the current 90?
Think of the Trump presidency as a Wikipedia entry, a project of constant updating, correction and revision. Once people get used to Donald Trump as a wiki, with him as the main editor, things might calm down. For Congress and the legislative agenda, midcourse corrections would become the daily routine, rather than media melodramas. The goal is relative stability.
There are all sorts of objections to a real-time Trump. It won’t solve White House disorganization, but nothing is workable in this unique context. The old normal isn’t happening and never will.
Discontinuity defines the Trump personality, and this won’t change. But if it’s all passing through him in real time, then corrections of facts, policy or intent can come earlier and reduce the current period of radioactive fallout.
Let Trump be Trump, for as long as it lasts.
Write henninger@wsj.com.
2e) Will Trump's Jewish supporters finally give up?
Russia, Flynn, Comey: Those scandals don’t make Jewish Republicans and mega-donors flinch. But Trump’s broken promises and cavalier behavior towards Israel is a deal breaker
By Jonathan S. Tobin May 17, 2017
The overwhelming liberal American Jewish community is a bastion of the Trump resistance movement. But, to the consternation of their neighbors, Jewish conservatives have generally stuck with President Donald Trump, even as his shaky first 100 days in office got even rockier, as the firing of FBI director James Comey (and reports that Trump asked him to shut down the investigation into then National Security Adviser Michael Flynn) and his disclosure of Israeli intelligence to the Russians plunged his administration into even darker controversies.
But as the Trump visit to Israel nears and his shift on a number of key issues concerning Israel becomes apparent, the question that must now be asked is: Will his Jewish supporters will finally jump ship? The next week and all that follows from it, in terms of the course of the next round of Middle East talks that Trump is attempting to jumpstart, will do more to answer that question than anything his critics say.
Baffling as it may be to liberals who remain focused on Trump’s unfitness for the presidency, Jewish Republicans were largely satisfied with the administration’s first months. Part of the reason is that in America’s bifurcated political culture, Republicans are inclined to discount all negative coverage of Trump coming from the mainstream media. More importantly, he has governed in most respects like a conventional conservative with respect to the Supreme Court and other domestic issues, leading them to believe what he accomplished outweighed other concerns.
But for Republican Jews the belief that Trump represented a chance to reverse President Obama’s push for more “daylight” between the U.S. and Israel was paramount. And it is there, rather than the scandals driving impeachment talk on the Left that the tipping point for Jewish Republicans may be found.
Confidence in Trump’s Israel policy was always based more on hope than anything else. At times during the 2016 campaign Trump said he would be “neutral” between Israel and the Palestinians and that he longed to make the real estate deal of the century in the Middle East.
But Jewish Republicans preferred to believe that he meant what he said when he promised to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and that he would be Israel’s best friend. As surety for their faith, they cited the influence of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and daughter Ivanka.
That faith seemed to be justified when Trump named lawyer David Friedman, an ardent supporter of the settlement movement, to be U.S. ambassador to Israel. That choice and Trump’s outsider’s contempt for much of what passes for conventional wisdom about U.S. foreign policy, gave his Jewish backers confidence that his administration would be solidly aligned with the Netanyahu government on the Palestinians as well as Iran.
Yet that isn’t how things have worked out. Trump’s characteristic hubris, and desire to outshine all of his predecessors who failed in the Middle East, have put him at odds with Netanyahu. It’s also a function of his reliance on the more mainstream figures like Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson who appear to adhere to traditional U.S. stands on not recognizing Jerusalem (and specifically the Western Wall) as part of Israel, and an inclination to an even-handed position between Israel and the Palestinians.
His Jewish supporters may still choose to believe the empty assurance that Trump will move the embassy at some point during his first term. But what they are faced with now is a president who may turn out to be every bit as determined to force territorial concessions on Israel, as well as to accept Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ disingenuous assurances about incitement and terror, just as Obama did. Add to that Trump’s reportedly considering lifting some sanctions on Iran, and the confounding news about him sharing Israeli intelligence with Russia - and the result is a president that Jewish Republicans are hard-pressed to defend.
Given the shift in the Democratic Party to a far less supportive position on Israel in recent years, that doesn’t leave Jewish Republicans - including mega donors like Sheldon Adelson - with much of an alternative. But if Trump adheres to his evenhanded stance on Israel, there will be little incentive for his Jewish backers to back the president, as the rest of the political world denounces him over the Russia and Comey controversies.
Jonathan S. Tobin is opinion editor of JNS.org and a Contributing Writer for National Review. Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin.
Jonathan S. Tobin is an award-winning columnist, blogger and editor.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
3) Meet the WaPo: Fake news ground zero
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
3) Meet the WaPo: Fake news ground zero
For decades now, the Washington Post and New York Times have been read only by left-wing minions of the Democratic Party. Both are well known propaganda machines of the far left in America. But the situation changed for the worse in 2016, when Donald Trump became the 45th president of the United States.
Jeffrey P. Bezos formally took over as the owner of The Washington Post in 2013, officially ending 80 years of local control of the newspaper by the Graham family.
Bezos's $250-million purchase was completed as expected with the signing of sale documents. The signing transferred the newspaper and other assets from The Washington Post Co. to Nash Holdings, Bezos's private investment company.
Jeff Bezos has been funding left-wing politicians and causes ever since becoming wealthy with his Amazon online retail establishment, which has been responsible for closing the doors of thousands of small independent retailers and even major national retail chains across the country.
Second only to George Soros, Bezos, who owns the WaPo, The Washington Post, which is ground zero for almost every negative "fake news" attack column against President Trump since 2013 – is the single largest financier of left-wing causes and the anti-Trump propaganda hitting our headlines every single day.
Other left-wing "fake news" outlets pick up these stories and run with them, regardless of all facts and evidence to the contrary, quoting the WaPo as their "source" to maintain a defensible position against libel and slander suits by saying "we only reported on the WaPo reports." Bingo: The fake news spreads across news outlets like a raging prairie fire.
In February 2017, after losing the presidential election with Hillary Clinton, John Podesta joined WaPo as a "contributing columnist." Since graduating Lane Tech High School in Chicago, Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois in 1971, where he had served as a volunteer for the presidential candidacy of Eugene McCarthy, and receiving his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in 1976, Podesta has spent his entire life at the highest levels of anti-American left-wing politics with the Clintons and Obamas, among many others.
Still wondering where the "fake news" headlines are coming from at WaPo? Read on:
"According to an unsubstantiated article by the Washington Post, anonymous CIA officials have confirmed that the Russian government hacked the United States election to favor Donald Trump." –December 2016
According to WaPo reports, they have been gaining their "fake news" information from "unnamed CIA leakers."
However, we are seeing more Washington, D.C. leaks than what we'd find out of a kitchen colander. Can they all be coming from CIA operatives working against America?
Almost every federal agency is full of anti-American employees who donate almost exclusively to Clinton, Obama, and every left-wing cause under George Soros's more than 200 NGOs (non-governmental agencies).These are the federal employee campaign donations for the 2016 election cycle.What the above chart shows is that 90% of federal employee union members and 83.8% of all federal employees are anti-Trump. Every last one of those could be a "leaker" working to undermine the Trump administration and the 63 million Americans who voted for him.
In addition, the far left has massive boots on the ground through more than 200 NGOs and billions in funding behind them from anti-Americans like George Soros of Open Society, Jeffrey Bezos of Amazon and the Washington Post, the Clintons, and the Obamas.
Furthermore, many of these NGOs enjoy tax-exempt and deductible status with the IRS and therefore are heavily funded by our tax dollars.Last but not least on this matter, Amazon and Washington Post owner Jeffrey Bezos received a $600-million federal contract with the CIA to create a "government cloud" for records storage and sharing, from which, it appears, massive anti-Trump government leaks of even classified information may be coming.
So Amazon's Jeffrey Bezos owns the single largest database of consumers in America and has taken a $600-million CIA (leakers) contract to build and manage their "cloud" – while owning the Washington Post (WaPo) at ground zero for all current leaked fake news stories aimed at destroying Trump… and Clinton campaign manager John Podesta is now a contributing columnist.
Still wondering where all the fake news stories against Trump are coming from? How? Why? Look no farther!
Still plan on shopping with Amazon.com or reading the Washington Post or any of the dozens of news outlets spreading the false propaganda by quoting the WaPo?
Amazing!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Parents, taxpayers and donors have little idea of the levels of lunacy, evil and lawlessness that have become features of many of today’s institutions of higher learning. Parents, taxpayers and donors who ignore or are too lazy to find out what goes on in the name of higher education are nearly as complicit as the professors and administrators who promote or sanction the lunacy, evil and lawlessness. As for the term “institutions of higher learning,” we might start asking: Higher than what? Let’s look at a tiny sample of academic lunacy.
During a campus debate, Purdue University professor David Sanders argued that a logical extension of pro-lifers’ belief that fetuses are human beings is that pictures of “a butt-naked body of a child” are child pornography. Clemson University’s chief diversity officer, Lee Gill, who’s paid $185,000 a year to promote inclusion, provided a lesson claiming that to expect certain people to be on time is racist.
To reduce angst among snowflakes in its student body, the University of California, Hastings College of the Law has added a “Chill Zone.” The Chill Zone, located in its library, has, just as most nursery schools have, mats for naps and beanbag chairs. Before or after a snooze, students can also use the space to do a bit of yoga or meditate. The University of Michigan Law School helped its students weather their Trump derangement syndrome — a condition resulting from Donald Trump’s election — by enlisting the services of an “embedded psychologist” in a room full of bubbles and play dough. To reduce pressure on law students, Joshua M. Silverstein, a law professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, thinks that “every American law school ought to substantially eliminate C grades and set its good academic standing grade point average at the B- level.”
Today’s academic climate might be described as a mixture of infantilism, kindergarten and totalitarianism. The radicals, draft dodgers and hippies of the 1960s who are now college administrators and professors are responsible for today’s academic climate. The infantilism should not be tolerated, but more important for the future of our nation are the totalitarianism and the hate-America lessons being taught at many of the nation’s colleges. For example, led by its student government leader, the University of California, Irvine’s student body voted for a motion, which the faculty approved, directing that the American flag not be on display because it makes some students uncomfortable and creates an unsafe, hostile environment. The flag is a symbol of hate speech, according to the student government leader. He said that the U.S. flag is just as offensive as Nazi and Islamic State flags and that the U.S. is the world’s most evil nation (http://tinyurl.com/kjoax3j).
In a recent New York Times op-ed, New York University provost Ulrich Baer argued: “The idea of freedom of speech does not mean a blanket permission to say anything anybody thinks. It means balancing the inherent value of a given view with the obligation to ensure that other members of a given community can participate in discourse as fully recognized members of that community.” That’s a vision that is increasingly being adopted on college campuses, and it’s leaking down to our primary and secondary levels of education. Baer apparently believes that the test for one’s commitment to free speech comes when he balances his views with those of others. His vision justifies the violent disruptions of speeches by Heather Mac Donald at Claremont McKenna College, Milo Yiannopoulos at UC Berkeley and Charles Murray at Middlebury College. Baer’s vision is totalitarian nonsense. The true test of one’s commitment to free speech comes when he permits people to be free to say and write those things he finds deeply offensive.
Americans who see themselves as either liberal or conservative should rise up against this totalitarian trend on America’s college campuses. I believe the most effective way to do so is to hit these campus tyrants where it hurts the most — in the pocketbook. Lawmakers should slash budgets, and donors should keep their money in their pockets.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2017 CREATORS.COM
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
