https://pjmedia.com/trending/This has not been a good week or so for Obama nor will it eventually be for Mueller.
First, Sgt Bowie Bergdahl admits he deserted and that flies in the face of Rice's comment Bowie was a hero and then we also have Obama feteing his parents at The White House and swapping 5 Islamist Terrorists from Guantanamo.
We also have Trump de-certifying the Iran Deal which Obama took to The U.N to avoid The Senate probably rejecting it as a lousy treaty.
Then we have the continued implosion of Obamacare and Trump, since Senate Republicans failed to act, taking a pen and correcting some of its shortfalls and then removing subsidies to health insurance companies in order to get them to buy into this abomination.
Breaking is information there was Russian collusion and potential payoffs to The Clinton Foundation as kickbacks for allowing Russia to purchase a large part of our nation's uranium production. Making matters worse is evidence the former Atty. General, Holder and even Obama, were aware.
We also have a prepared document by Comey exonerating Hillary before the FBI investigation of her was over.
Finally, we have pictures of Harvey with Obama and Michelle reminding us how close Weinstein was to high up Democrats because of his financial generosity. Harvey also has been found to have been very generous with his sexual attributes with a lot of Hollywood women which was covered up by various mass media entities.
Before all of these events fully unfold, I believe it will seriously undercut Mueller's investigation and expose it for what it has been all along, a contrived witch hunt. Even the second in command at Justice, Rosenstein, may be involved.
I get criticized by some for bringing up Obama since he is no longer president. If Black Lives Matter folks can attack Jefferson, Washington and Lee, urging their statues should be taken down, I feel safe discussing Obama's many past lies.
Obama received a Noble Peace Prize when he actually deserved The Pinocchio Award.
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Russia agrees to restrict Iran's deployment in Syria. Netanyahu seems to have been effective. (See 1 below.)
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Does populism threaten democracy?
I believe nothing threatens democracy when citizens are well informed, educated and capable of reasoning, tolerant of others and the nation is not heavily in debt. Since these no longer seem to be American characteristics and circumstances I do believe anything carried to an extreme is a threat. That said, I do not believe populism, in and of itself, is a threat. Cars are not a threat, guns are not a threat. It is what we do with them that becomes threatening.(See 2 below.)
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For it's interest:
President Donald Trump did a fantastic job in his speech tonight to Heritage members.
He made the case for conservative solutions on tax reform, Obamacare, and immigration.
And he thanked Heritage members for all they do for the cause of freedom.
In fact, so many people tried to watch the video that the website crashed. I'm sorry if you tried to watch while the site was down.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ A Bunch Of Links andSome Dangerfield Humor.
On Saturday, Nov 4 there will be an auction at Delegal Marina from 4 to 8 for the purpose of raising money to purchase companions for vets.
This is a CBS story on the founder of Companions for Heroes (formerly Pets to Vets), David Sharpe. David is an active member of the SIRC as well as the Skidaway Professional Republicans.
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You may, or may not, agree with Rand Paul, but at least give a few minutes of your time to hear his message.
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Like him or not, he was one of a kind. (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1) RUSSIA AGREES TO KEEP IRAN, HEZBOLLAH FORCES AWAY FROM ISRAELI BORDER
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told Israel that Moscow has agreed to expand a buffer zone along the Israeli-Syrian border, where Iranian and Hezbollah forces will not be allowed to enter, Arab media reported Wednesday.
The statement attributed to an Israeli diplomatic official by London-based Asharq Al-Awsat said that Russia had refused the Israeli request for a 40 kilometers (25 miles) buffer zone, but expressed willingness to extend a 10-15 kilometer off-limits zone. Russia, which views Iran as a key player in resolving the crisis in Syria, has repeatedly emphasized the importance of the role that the Islamic Republic plays in the war-torn country.
As the war in Syria seems to be winding down in Assad’s favor due to Moscow’s intervention, Israel fears that Iran will help Hezbollah produce accurate precision-guided missiles and aid Hezbollah and other Shi'ite militias to strengthen their foothold in the Golan Heights.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly criticized a US-Russian cease-fire deal in Syria, saying that it does not include any provisions to stop Iranian expansion in the area. Russia is reported to have rejected a request from Jerusalem for a 40-kilometer buffer zone between the Golan Heights and any Iranian-backed militias in Syria, only agreeing to make sure that no Shi'ite fighter would come closer than 5 kilometers from Israel.
According to the report in Asharq al-Awsat, Shoigu told Israeli officials that the 40 km demand was unrealistic and that Iranian and Hezbollah troops have not approached the border since Russian troops entered Syria, saying that therefore the request was “exaggerated” and “superfluous.”
Israeli officials have repeatedly voiced concerns over the growing Iranian presence on its borders and the smuggling of sophisticated weaponry to Hezbollah from Tehran to Lebanon via Syria, stressing that both are red-lines for the Jewish State.
Hours before Shoigu landed in Israel, Israeli fighter jets destroyed a Syrian anti-aircraft missile battery stationed some 50 kilometers east of Damascus which had fired on Israeli planes in Lebanese airspace earlier that morning.
While Russia was updated about the incident in real time, according to the Israeli sources quoted by Asharq al-Awsat, the incident overshadowed the meeting and caused some tension between the officials. The report alleged that Shoigu considered it a “dangerous hostile operation that almost caused a severe crisis.”
Israel and Russia implemented a de-confliction mechanism system over Syria to prevent accidental clashes between the two militaries.
Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman who met privately with Shoigu at the IDF’s Kirya Military Headquarters in Tel Aviv Monday evening stated that “we will not interfere in Syria’s internal affairs but on the other hand we will not allow Iran and Hezbollah to turn Syria into a forward outpost against Israel and we will not allow the transfer of sophisticated weapons from Iran through Syria to Lebanon.
Liberman will leave Wednesday night for a four-day visit to the United States to meet with his US counterpart James Mattis. During their previous meeting the two defense chiefs discussed issues such as the ongoing civil war in Syria and the threats posed by Iran and it is believed that Liberman will ask Mattis for the US to act against Iran’s growing entrenchment in Syria.
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2)
Is Populism a Threat to Democracy?
Disagreements over immigration and sovereignty needn’t imperil basic norms.
After Emmanuel Macron’s startling emergence as the dominant force in French politics, it became fashionable to argue that the populist wave sweeping the democratic West was receding. If the subsequent success of the Alternative for Germany challenged this optimistic view, the results of Sunday’s legislative elections in Austria should refute it. The transnational protest against existing political arrangements goes on.
Austria’s far-right Freedom Party, whose first leader was once an SS officer, increased its share of the popular vote from 20.5% in 2013 to 26% in the current election. The center-right People’s Party did even better, increasing its share from 24% to 31.7%. In December 2016 the Freedom Party polled as high as 35%. Some have mistakenly drawn comfort from the drop-off, but the People’s Party prevailed, in part, by adopting a toned-down Freedom Party agenda. The two parties are now likely to join forces in a coalition government.
Immigration drove the results. Like Germany, Austria accepted a large number of refugees at the height of the 2015 crisis, with similar political consequences. Sebastian Kurz, the 31-year-old People’s Party leader and likely the country’s next chancellor, embraced a comprehensive anti-immigrant agenda. As foreign minister and minister of integration in the current government, he demanded closure of the Balkan route on which immigrants traveled from Turkey to Austria and Northern Europe. He also imposed a burqa ban.
As a candidate, Mr. Kurz proposed cutting welfare benefits for immigrants, penalizing new arrivals who do not work hard enough to integrate into Austrian society, and sending migrants rescued in the Mediterranean to camps in North Africa while their applications for asylum are evaluated.
All traditional center-right parties throughout the West essentially face the same choice: either retain a moderate stance on immigration and lose ground to the far right, which is what happened to Angela Merkel, or adopt a portion of the far right’s anti-immigrant agenda and retain public support.
The center-right prime minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, turned back a stiff challenge from Geert Wilders’s anti-Islam Freedom Party in March by shifting toward Mr. Wilders’s stance on immigration. Two months before the general elections, Mr. Rutte wrote an open letter saying those who “refuse to adapt” should “behave normally, or go away.” It cannot be right, he declared in an interview, for a Muslim bus driver to say, “I refuse to shake a woman’s hand because that doesn’t fit my belief”—and for a Dutch human rights board to back his refusal. “That’s precisely why I and many other people are rebelling.”
While populist parties in Northern and Western Europe challenge assumptions and policies long shared by center-left and center-right parties in Europe, they do not represent a frontal assault on democratic institutions and norms. Control of national borders is an attribute of sovereignty, after all. The tension between the European Union and its member states on this question is a quarrel within democracy, not about democracy. Nor is it unreasonable to expect immigrants to act in accordance with the basic political and social tenets of societies that have chosen to admit them.
As European publics have altered their views of immigration, their political systems are bound to adapt. This is what democracies do.
A boundary exists between legitimate policy change and subversion of democracy itself. The publics in established democracies endorse the former, but not the latter. A new survey from the Pew Research Center shows that in North America and most of Europe, public support for representative democracy remains high—much higher than for any alternative.
This is no reason for complacency. The same survey finds high levels of dissatisfaction with the performance of elected officials, along with low levels of trust in government. Supporters of populist parties are more likely than others to express mistrust. Many who back democracy in principle favor a greater measure of direct public involvement—through national referendums and other devices—in shaping policy. This is a further sign of party systems and representative institutions in disrepair.
Democracies must wrestle with these challenges, but they are not evidence of impending collapse. Ideological opposition to liberal democracy was at its peak in the 1920s and ’30s. Even then, not a single established democracy collapsed from within. “Once democracy takes root,” conclude Agnes Cornell, Jørgen Møller and Svend-Erik Skaaning, who have studied the interwar period in detail, “it tends to be remarkably stable, even in very difficult circumstances.” Not so for newer, less-established democracies, which are vulnerable in tough times.
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