Super Bowl Quandary. U.N Funding Cuts - Don't Stop. Chai Means Life. Putin Watching America Chase Its Tail.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/ EuymzkaPagM

We have been invited to a Super Bowl Party and we are going because we like the people who invited us and their other guests but I did think long and hard because I am not big on football and only watch a few games when Alabama plays.

Secondly, I would not ordinarily support, by watching a TV show, the actions of those who repel me. I know it is a very small thing but my presence signifies I support what I find repugnant and my watching gives support to their sponsors.

So I will go with mixed feelings because I am repulsed by those who show disrespect for our country and its symbols.  We are not a perfect nation but we beat most all the rest and the video above lays out the case I would make if I were as gifted as this beautiful young lady.

Iranians are being killed for expressing their discontent with their repressive regime.  NFL players earn millions from the many who disagree with their actions.  There is something wrong/disquieting  about this picture.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Radical predictions by radical progressives and sore losers has a way of boomeranging. (See 1 below.)

And:

Don't stop.  There is so much more bloat and bias that needs culling and/or eliminating.  (See 1a below.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Democrats are lusting over the possibility they may get a chance to Impeach Trump if he fires Mueller.  I can think of nothing dumber for him to do because it would play into their hands. 

Mueller's investigation has already shown itself to be stacked against Trump by reason of staffing.

Meanwhile, I can think of nothing dumber than Democrats who believe this course of action is sane and will enhance them as a credible party. That said, many in the party are dumb enough to follow the likes of their glorious dingbat, Maxine Waters.  Misguided power can go to a politician's head faster than what they drink.(See 2 below.)
+++++++++++++++++++++
It will be tough to do what needs to be regarding the Iranian protesters but at least we are not hiding behind lies and cowardliness.  (See 3 below.)

Glick chimes in regarding Iran. (See 3a below.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I have heard Trump had 71 meaningful accomplishments in 2017 but few were ever reported on because that would have brought  attention to them and would have been heart rendering for the Trump haters and mass media crowd.

I was also told the NYT's did a Mea Culpa regarding the Trump economy which they admitted was "booming" as well as wages beginning to rise.(See 4 below.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
In a previous memo I wrote that CHAI meant good luck and I was corrected because it literally means living, to life and I took  poetic license.

Also:

It has snowed in Savannah and all bridges to our island are closed as are the tennis courts, golf courses,  restaurants and our gym so we are staying in, playing games, reading books and Dagny put a cup of water outside and now has a frozen Popsicle.

So I lied again and was able to finish and send another memo.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Meanwhile, some of my  anti-Trumper memo readers continue to remind me Trump is a liar, he is a bad human with no scruples etc.  If he were more like Obama the market would be down, the confidence index would be lower, the U.N would be richer with our tax payer's money and Israel would still be hung out to dry.

I am also being told, Republicans have been on Hillary's case for 30 years and think about their own political situations and not that of the country.

I have no doubt, as the deficit mounts as a result of the tax cuts, Democrats hypocritically will point out how Trump is going to bankrupt the country and they will keep repeating the tax cut is for the rich and not for the middle class.  I heard where a mass media national TV company asked four accountants to project the tax returns of four middle class families and they revealed significant tax cuts so the media organization pulled the story.

Politics is a lousy enterprise and one has to wade through a  lot of garbage to come up with what is close to the truth and factual.  It is not easy but most Americans instinctively know what is the truth and can separate the wheat .  This is because we are free.  This is why they rejected Hillary and took a chance with Donald. So far things are improving, he is not the disaster the "aginners" claimed he would be but probably his personality flaws stands in the way of his accomplishing more.

When it comes to Iran and N Korea the rubber may soon be hitting the road and Mueller's investigation is impeding the administration's ability to focus, to be relied upon and supported should there be a confrontation. There continues to be no evidence of anything bordering on collusion and , even if there was collusion, contact with foreign governments is not against the law unless some  illegal exchange was made as allegedly took place with Hillary and her deal to allow a Russian company to acquire 25% of our uranium in payment to her foundation and her husband's speaking engagement.

Trump is in a bind because he must allow Mueller to pursue the investigation, spend the time and money and disrupt his ability to govern because Democrats created a fake dossier and the FBI relied upon it so they could obtain FISA warrants to surveil Trump operatives.  Putin has got to be laughing up his sleeve watching  all of this chasing of our own tails.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dick
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
1)

About That Trump ‘Autocracy’

Remember all those progressive predictions of looming fascism?

By  The Editorial Board

As Donald Trump heads into his second year as President, we’re pleased to report that there hasn’t been a fascist coup in Washington. This must be terribly disappointing to the progressive elites who a year ago predicted an authoritarian America because Mr. Trump posed a unique threat to democratic norms. But it looks like the U.S. will have to settle for James Madison’s boring checks and balances.

“How to stop an autocracy,” said a Feb. 7, 2017 headline on Vox, ruminating on a zillion-word essay in The Atlantic on how Donald Trump might impose authoritarian rule. Academics and pundits mined analogies to Mussolini, Hitler and Vladimir Putin.

Four political scientists even formed something called Bright Line Watch—with the help of foundation money—to “monitor the status of democratic practices and highlight potential threats to American democracy.” Readers won’t be surprised to learn that the only graver threat than Mr. Trump is the Republican Congress that refuses to impeach him.

One of the Bright Line Watch founders, University of Rochester professor Gretchen Helmke, wrote in the Washington Post on April 25, “Could Trump set off a constitutional crisis? Here’s what we can learn from Latin America.”

A year later, where are we on the road to Venezuela?

***

Far from rolling over Washington institutions like a tank, Mr. Trump seems as frustrated as other Presidents with the limits of his power. He achieved one major legislative goal in tax reform but failed on health care. His border wall isn’t built and he may have to legalize the “Dreamer” immigrants if he wants Congress to approve money for it.

Mr. Trump’s political appointees still aren’t close to fully staffing the executive branch. He’s making more headway on judges, but that’s partly due to former Democratic leader Harry Reid’s decision in 2013 to eliminate the Senate filibuster for judicial nominees. The press cheered on that partisan, mid-session change of Senate rules to pack the courts.

Mr. Trump’s rhetorical attacks on the media are excessive. But for all of his bluster, we haven’t seen a single case of Trump prosecutors seeking warrants to eavesdrop on journalists to discover their sources. Barack Obama’s Justice Department surreptitiously did that to the Associated Press and James Rosen of Fox News in violation of Justice guidelines.

As for legal checks and balances, progressive judges in the lower courts have overturned three versions of Mr. Trump’s travel ban. Their legal analysis is dubious given the Constitution’s grant of authority to the political branches on immigration and national security, and our guess is that the Supreme Court will eventually overrule the lower courts. But the point is that judges are hardly deferring to the Trump Administration. Oh, and since when do tyrants deregulate to take power away from the administrative state?

Mr. Trump is also facing a special counsel investigation with essentially unchecked power to investigate him and his family. Robert Mueller is ostensibly charged with looking into ties between Russians and the 2016 Trump campaign, but Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appears to have given Mr. Mueller carte blanche.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russia probe and seems unable to exert any discipline over the FBI. The Justice Department ultimately reports to Mr. Trump. Yet he can’t even get his nominees at the FBI and Justice to tell Congress what they used as evidence to get a FISA warrant against Trump campaign officials in 2016. Who is the unaccountable authority here?

The real story of the past year is that, despite the daily Trumpian melodrama, the U.S. political system is working more or less as usual. Mr. Trump has sometimes broken with familiar presidential decorum, especially in his public statements and attacks on individuals. But he is paying a considerable political price for that excess with an approval rating below 40% less than a year into his term.

Voters rejected his preferred Senate candidates in Alabama twice. Republicans were routed in Virginia’s elections as Democrats came out in droves, and on present trend the GOP will lose its House majority in November. In other words, we are watching the typical back and forth of American democracy.

Democratic institutional norms are worth defending, which is why we called out the Obama IRS for bias against the tea party. We’ll do the same if Mr. Trump exceeds his constitutional power. But the lesson of the past year is that progressives should have more faith in the American system—whether they’re in power or not. Losing an election isn’t the same as losing a democracy.

1a) Trump Gets the U.N. to Cut Spending

The U.S. uses its leverage for once to force budget reforms.

By The Editorial Board

Here’s something more miraculous than Congress spending less money—the United Nations doing it. Yet that’s what happened at the end of 2017 as the 193-nation General Assembly agreed to a 5% spending cut in its new biennial budget after American prodding.

The General Assembly agreed by consensus to shrink the U.N. budget by $286 million, to $5.4 billion, down 5% from the prior budget. The U.N. will save about $50 million by trimming hiring and overhead costs, and another $18 million from cutting the U.N. Department of Management, better known as human resources. The peacekeeping operations budget, which was negotiated separately earlier in 2017, was reduced by $593 million to $7.3 billion, a 7.5% cut.

The General Assembly also agreed to spending reforms, including restrictions on construction projects and an audit of the U.N.’s $60 billion staff pension fund. Starting in 2020, the U.N. will move to annual budgeting, which Secretary-General spokesman Stéphane Dujarric called “one of the most significant shifts in the programme planning and budgeting process of the Organization since the 1970s,” which says a lot about the U.N.’s accounting systems.

These reductions are hardly draconian. They don’t include cuts to the U.N.’s elevator operators, who cost about $300,000 per year, or trim the budget of the International Court of Justice’s judges and spouses, who travel first class. Committee for Programme and Coordination members, a strategic planning group for bureaucrats, holds a five-week meeting every year in New York City, rather than meet in a cheaper location or via teleconference.

Secretary-General António Guterres has supported the reforms. But none of this would have happened without pressure from the United States. President Trump called out the U.N.’s bloated bureaucracy and “mismanagement” in September, and U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley has pressed the case. The U.S. has leverage at the U.N. because it provides 22% of its budget, but credit the Trump Administration for finally using it.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

2) Donald Trump’s Watergate?

Robert Bork’s lessons from the Saturday Night Massacre take on new relevance.

By William McGurn

S

Robert Bork has been dead five years. But at a moment when the air is thick with reckless talk about a “constitutional crisis” if President Trump were to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Bork’s explanation for his firing of Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox in 1973 offers balance the nation could use right about now.

Let us begin by stipulating that when asked by reporters whether he was going to give Mr. Mueller the heave-ho, Mr. Trump answered with no ambiguity: “No, I’m not.” In a follow-up interview with the New York Times, the president said of Mr. Mueller, “I think he’s going to be fair.”

As clear as these statements are, they have done nothing to stanch the flow of warnings from people directing Mr. Trump not to do what he says he has no intention of doing. From Bernie Sanders and Mark Warner in the Senate to MSNBC and MoveOn.org, the chorus goes up: Mr. President, do not fire Mr. Mueller or you will create a constitutional crisis.

There are two broad problems with these admonitions. The first is political. Notwithstanding the drama and foreboding with which these warnings are delivered, Mr. Trump’s most embittered foes can’t help leaving the impression that sacking Mr. Mueller is precisely what they most fervently pray he’ll do, bringing them closer to the impeachment they hope for.

The bigger problem is definitional. A president exercising his constitutional authority as head of the executive branch to fire someone in that branch may well create a politicalcrisis. But it is in no way a constitutional crisis.

Here Bork’s ruminations about his experience during Watergate are illuminating. Not unlike Mr. Mueller, whose investigation has come into question because of the way he’s stacked his team with Hillary Clinton partisans, Cox’s close relationship with the Kennedy family persuaded Nixon (wrongly, Bork wrote) that the prosecution was in fact a persecution led by his political enemies.

Ultimately this led to the so-called Saturday Night Massacre. Cox had demanded the White House tapes when he’d learned of their existence, and, when he refused the compromise the president offered, Nixon directed Elliot Richardson to fire Cox. The attorney general resigned rather than carry out the order, as did his deputy, William Ruckelshaus. Solicitor General Bork then became acting attorney general. In that capacity he fired Cox but kept the investigation going, with the same team of investigators.

In his book “Saving Justice,” published posthumously in 2013, Bork recounts an exchange with a lawyer who told him he too should have refused to fire Cox because it would have brought Nixon down sooner. Bork responded as follows:

“If a constitutionally inferior officer of the executive branch could topple the president of the United States, then the country would begin to resemble a banana republic. There are constitutionally prescribed methods for ousting an unwanted president: impeachment by the House and conviction on the article of impeachment by the Senate. Anything else is civil disobedience.”

In a 1993 article for Commentary, Bork acknowledged that any competent prosecutor would have sought the Nixon tapes as Cox did. But he also argued that once Cox rejected the president’s order that he seek no further tapes, “Nixon now had to fire him” because “no President can afford to be faced down in public by a subordinate member of the executive branch.”

Just as interesting is Bork’s insistence that ordinary Justice Department prosecutors were fully capable of investigating the executive branch: “Though there was no need for a special prosecutor to deal with Watergate,” he wrote, “it was politically inevitable that one would be named.”

The situation today with Mr. Trump is similar. As president, he could order Mr. Mueller fired, as Nixon did with Cox. And it would not be a “constitutional crisis.”

This is not to say that it wouldn’t create a political crisis. In his book Bork explained that though he would have preferred to resign after firing Cox, he remained to prevent a wave of destabilizing resignations that threatened to leave Justice nonfunctional.

Firing Mr. Mueller would carry similar risks. For one thing, it would convey to a large segment of the American people that Mr. Trump has something to hide. Moreover, the Saturday Night Massacre led to the abomination of the independent counsel law, and sacking Mr. Mueller would encourage similar, terrible legislative “fixes.” The two offered last year by Sens. Lindsey Graham and Thom Tillis would further insulate a special counsel from accountability by introducing the judiciary into an executive branch decision.

Finally, there’s sheer political calculation. At a time when the partisanship and unprofessionalism of the special counsel’s team is becoming as much a story as the Russian collusion they are investigating, for Mr. Trump to change the channel now would be a particularly brainless move.

In 1973, amid the tumult of Watergate, America benefited from the courage and sober judgment of Robert Bork. We could use it today.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

3)  Iranian Protests Raise Tricky Questions for US and Saudi Policymakers

INSS Insight No. 1004, Emily B. Landau, Gilead Sher

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: In many ways, Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad faces the same considerations in deciding how to respond to the protests in Iran as does US President Donald J. Trump. Support for the protesters could amount to support for hardline conservative factions in Iran.

If Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman’s checkered foreign policy track record is anything to go by, Iran could tempt him to embark on yet another risky adventure inspired by widespread anti-government protests in Iran – the real focus of his multiple regional quagmires, which include the devastating war in Yemen and the failed effort to force Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri to resign.

In many ways, Prince Muhammad faces the same considerations in deciding how to respond to events in Iran as does US President Donald J. Trump. This month, Trump will have to choose not only whether to certify to Congress Iranian compliance with the 2015 international agreement that curbed the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, but also whether to waive US sanctions on Iran. A decision to reimpose economic sanctions could mean a US withdrawal from the agreement.

At the core of Trump’s decision, as well as Prince Muhammad’s deliberations on how and if to respond to the Iranian protests, is this question: Does a strengthening of hardline conservative factions in Iran serve the US and Saudi purpose of at least further containing the Islamic Republic, and possibly engineering a situation that would be conducive to regime change?

“The most likely scenario is that the evidence of popular dissatisfaction and the inevitable repression will harden the Trump administration’s position on sustaining the deal and provide additional incentives for ratcheting up new economic pressure on the government, They also may see some possibility of flipping the Europeans if the crackdown is fierce and well-documented,” said Brookings fellow and former State Department policy planning Iran expert Suzanne Maloney. Europe has urged Trump not to nix the nuclear agreement.

Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, in contrast to the hardliners, has sought to reach out to the protesters by recognizing their right to criticize while denouncing violence and promising to address their economic grievances.

Rouhani may be able to tackle some issues like the fraudulent financial institutions that have deprived many of their savings, but will struggle to fix the country’s structural economic issues, including the power of hardline institutions such as the Revolutionary Guards Corps. He may also be able to institutionalize and anchor in law the right to protest with the backing of hardliners. Moreover, addressing economic issues will be even more daunting if Trump effectively withdraws from the nuclear agreement.

Ultimately, the odds are that hardliners, irrespective of what scenario unfolds, will emerge strengthened by the current crisis, either as a result of the protests losing momentum as the regime curbs access to social media, a brutal squashing of the protests as a last resort, or because increased external pressure will initially unite rival factions and reinforce widespread disillusionment with the nuclear agreement – a compact that has failed to provide tangible economic benefits to a majority of Iranians.

Looming in the background is the risk that Prince Muhammad, with or without US backing or cooperation, will seek to exploit the Islamic Republic’s problems by attempting to further destabilize it by stirring unrest among already restive ethnic minority groups such as the Kurds and the Baloch. Kermanshah, a city in predominantly Kurdish western Iran, was one of the first cities to which the protests spread after they erupted in the conservative stronghold of Mashhad.

Saudi Arabia has funneled large amounts of money in the last 18 months to militant groups and madrassas or religious seminaries in the Pakistani province of Balochistan, which borders on the Iranian region of Sistan, and Baluchistan – both populated by restive Baloch populations. A Riyadh-based think tank believed to be supported by Prince Muhammad last year published a blueprint for stirring unrest among the Iranian Baluch.

President Trump and the US State Department have in recent days expressed support for the protesters, urged the international community to do the same, and said they back those in Iran who seek a peaceful transition of government.

Various US analysts have argued that Trump’s anti-Iranian track record, including his attempted bans on granting visas to Iranians, curtails the impact of his support for the protesters and might even strengthen the hardliners by allowing them to point fingers at alleged foreign instigation.

“While we’re on Trump, the impact of his tweets has been marginal at best. They’ve triggered a slew of angry comments, packed with ridicule. Across classes, factions and generations in Iran, there is a shared contempt for #POTUS whose policies look erratic and hypocritical,” tweeted Bloomberg News’ Iran correspondent, Golnar Motevalli.

Rather than speaking out, the analysts proposed concrete steps the US could take to support the protesters. Maloney and journalist Maziar Bahari suggested the US could use its influence with technology, satellite internet providers, and social media companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to try to keep the protesters’ communications channels open.

Former State Department official Reza Marashi argued that advice he and others proffered in 2009, when the Iranian government faced far larger protests against alleged election fraud, remain valid in the current situation.

“We advised our superiors to express concern about the violence against protestors, and highlight the importance of respecting free speech, democratic process, and peaceful dissent. We also emphasized a need for the US government to publicly express its respect for Iranian sovereignty, its desire to avoid making America the issue during a domestic Iranian protest, and its belief that it is up to Iranians to determine who Iran’s leaders will be,” Marashi recalled.

Much of that advice has been ignored by the Trump administration. In doing so, the administration has not only allowed Rouhani and the hardliners to point to a scapegoat, but has seemingly gone out of its way to raise Iranian fears that US policy, with the Saudis in tow, is focused on regime change.

“Washington would be wise to acknowledge the limits of its power inside Iran. Policymakers and pundits cannot change this simple truth: The problems are Iranian, the protestors are Iranian, and the solution will be Iranian,” Marashi noted.

Dr. James M. Dorsey, a non-resident Senior Associate at the BESA Center, is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University and co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture.


3a)  The Iranian explosion of truth

By Caroline B. Glick

 If the Iranian regime is unable to brutally stomp out the countrywide protests raging through the country, and if the protesters achieve their goal of bringing down the regime, they will go down in history as the saviors of millions of people not just in Iran but throughout the world.

Given the earth shattering potential of the protests it is extraordinary to see the liberal media in the US and Europe struggle to downplay their significance.

Aside from a lukewarm statement on Twitter from British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, as of Monday morning – five days into the protests – no senior European official had spoken in favor of the hundreds of thousands of Iranians marching throughout their country demanding freedom.

In the US, former members of the Obama administration and the liberal media have determinedly downplayed the importance of the protests. They have insisted that President Donald Trump should stop openly supporting the protesters and so adopt former president Barack Obama’s policy of effectively siding with the Iranian regime against the Iranian people who seek its overthrow.

These talking points have been pushed out into the media echo chamber by Obama’s former deputy national security adviser and strategic communications chief Ben Rhodes, his former national security adviser Susan Rice and former secretary of state John Kerry.

Obama’s Middle East coordinator Philip Gordon stated them outright in an op-ed in The New York Times on Saturday. Gordon called on Trump “to keep quiet and do nothing” in response to the protests.

In Gordon’s view, no matter how big their beef with the regime, the protesters hate the US more. And they really hate Trump.

Gordon wrote, “Whatever Iranians think of their own government, they are unlikely to want as a voice for their grievances an American president who has relentlessly opposed economic relief for their country and banned them from traveling to the United States.”

Just as Obama’s surrogates have repeated Gordon’s claims, so the Obama-supporting liberal media have gone out of their way to diminish the importance of the protests in their coverage of them and use Obama’s surrogates as their “expert” analysts to explain what is happening (or rather, distort what is happening) to their audiences.

Obama administration officials have been so outspoken in their defense of the Iranian regime because they rightly view the prospect that the protesters will succeed in overthrowing the regime as a mortal threat to their legacy.

Obama’s foreign policy rested on the assumption that the US was a colonialist, aggressive and immoral superpower. By their telling, the Iranians – like the Cubans and the Russians – were right to oppose the US due to its legacy of meddling in the internal affairs of other countries. This anti-American worldview informed the Obama administration’s conviction that it was incumbent on the US to make amends for its previous decades of foreign policy.

Hence, Obama traveled the globe in 2009 and 2010 apologizing for the policies of his predecessors. Hence, Obama believed that the US had no moral right to stand with the Iranian people against the regime in the 2009 Green Revolution. As he saw it, anyone who stood with the US was no better than an Uncle Tom. Truly authentic foreign regimes were be definition anti-American. Since the Green Revolutionaries were begging for his support, by definition, they didn’t deserve it.

Since the current wave on anti-regime protests began last Thursday, the liberal media have parroted the Obama alumni’s talking points because they feel that their war against Trump requires them to embrace Obama’s legacy just as they embraced his talking points and policies for eight years.

After all, if Obama is not entirely infallible, then Trump cannot be entirely fallible. And if Trump may be partially right and Obama partially wrong, then their dispute may be a substantive rather than existential one. And so, the New York Times’ coverage of the most significant story in the world has deliberately distorted and downplayed events on the ground in Iran.

The protests are potentially so important because the Iranian regime is so dangerous. Thanks to Obama, the regime is on a glide path to a nuclear arsenal. Its proxy armies in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq possess sophisticated armaments most militaries can only dream of. Its tentacles spread throughout the globe.

The longer the Iranian regime remains in power, the greater the likelihood humanity will soon face a global conflagration that will dwarf World War II.

Nothing any single state does against Iran’s proxies will end Iran’s continued ability to cause mayhem and death on multiple fronts. Every day the Iranian regime remains in place, it will use its power to continue its direct and indirect wars against its enemies in the Middle East and throughout the world.

Gordon argued that Trump’s pro-Israel and pro-Saudi policies since taking office have made him less credible with the Iranian people. All you have to do to understand that this is nonsense is listen to what the protesters are chanting. They insist that they want their country’s money spent at home, on them. They do not want their money used to underwrite Hezbollah, the Assad regime in Syria and Hamas’s regime in Gaza. In other words, they don’t want to make war with Israel – or, presumably Saudi Arabia.

In 2016, flush with cash from Obama’s nuclear deal, Iran quadrupled its support of Hezbollah from $200 million to $800m. per year.

In 2012 Iran cut off its funding to Hamas in retaliation for Hamas’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood against Iran’s Syrian proxy President Bashar Assad. In the wake of Obama’s nuclear deal, Iran became Hamas’s largest financier.

Last August, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar said that Iran is Hamas’s “largest backer financially and militarily.”

The $100 billion in sanctions relief Iran received in the wake of the nuclear deal enabled the regime to give hundreds of millions of additional dollars each year to its proxy militias and armies in Iraq, Yemen and Syria.

It is self-evident that if the protesters get their way and the ayatollahs are overthrown, that money would stop flowing to Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis and the Shi’ite militias in Iraq. Instead, that money, and billions more, would be spent developing Iran.

There are many ways that the nations of the world can help the protesters in Iran. The US and Iran’s other targets can expose the financial corruption in the Islamic Republic, including the bank account information of everyone from Supreme Dictator Ayatollah Ali Khamenei down to local Basij commanders. They can broadcast anti-regime information into Iran through multiple platforms outside the regime’s control. They can bypass the regime and unblock Twitter, Facebook, Telegraph and other social media platforms.

Aside from that, the Trump administration can take immediate steps to constrain even further the regime’s access to the international monetary system and force European and US firms to cancel their multi-billion dollar deals with the regime.

There are many reasons to fear that the protests will fail to achieve their goal of overthrowing the regime. The regime is already sending its forces out to repress the protesters through killing and mass arrests.

But even if the protesters’ prospects of success are small, there is no excuse for not supporting them, as constructively, enthusiastically and unconditionally as possible. There is certainly no excuse for working to preserve Obama’s foreign policy legacy at the expense of a popular uprising that has the potential to avert a world war.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

4)The Washington Post

The 10 best things Trump has done in his first year in office

By:  Marc A. Thiessen

As we approach the end of President Trump’s first year in office, the list of extraordinary things he has done — for both good and ill — is nothing short of remarkable. Trump inspires such deep emotions in his critics and supporters that many have struggled to objectively assess his presidency. Some are so blinded by their hatred of Trump that they refuse to acknowledge the good he has done, while others are so blinded by devotion that they overlook almost any transgression.

In my columns, I’ve tried to give Trump the credit he deserves when he does the right thing, while calling him out when he does the wrong thing. So, here is my list of the 10 best things Trump has done in his first 11 months. (On Friday, I will give you my list of the 10 worst.)

10. He enforced President Barack Obama’s red line against Syria’s use of chemical weapons. When the regime of Bashar al-Assad used a toxic nerve agent on innocent men, women and children, Trump didn’t wring his hands. He acted quickly and decisively, restoring America’s credibility on the world stage that Obama had squandered.

9. He has taken a surprisingly tough line with Russia. Trump approved a $47 million arms package for Ukraine, sent troops to Poland’s border with Russia and imposed new sanctions on Moscow for violating the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

8. He recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Four American presidents promised to do it, but only one actually did. This is why the American people elected Trump. He does what he promises to do, for better or for worse — in this case, definitely for the better. Even Jeb Bush tweeted his approval.

7. He withdrew from the Paris climate agreement. After George W. Bush pulled out of the disastrous Kyoto treaty, U.S. emissions went down faster than much of Europe. The same will be true 

for Trump’s departure from the Paris accord. Combined with his approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, and opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to exploration, Trump is helping usher in a new age of American energy development.

6. He got NATO allies to kick in $12 billion more toward our collective security. Decades of pleading by the Bush and Obama administrations failed to get NATO allies to meet their financial commitments to the alliance, but Trump’s tough talk and reticence to affirm America’s Article V commitment did the trick. NATO is stronger as a result.

5. He has virtually eliminated the Islamic State’s physical caliphate. Trump removed the constraints Obama placed on our military and let it drive the terrorists from their strongholds.

4. He admitted he was wrong on Afghanistan and reversed Obama’s disastrous withdrawal. In a rare admission, Trump declared: “My original instinct was to pull out . . . But all my life, I’ve heard that decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk in the Oval Office. . . . A hasty withdrawal would create a vacuum for terrorists.”

3 He enacted historic tax and regulatory reform that has unleashed economic growth. Trump signed the first comprehensive tax reform in three decades and removed the wet blanket of Obama-era regulations smothering our economy. We are now heading into our third consecutive quarter of above 3 percent growth.

2. He is installing conservative judges who will preside for decades. With his appointment of Neil M. Gorsuch, Trump secured a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, and he is moving at record pace to fill the federal appeals courts with young conservative judges.

1. He, not Hillary Clinton, was inaugurated as president. Trump delivered the coup de grace that ended the corrupt, dishonest Clinton political machine.

There are many other significant achievements that did not make the top 10. Trump has taken a clear, strong stand against the narco-dictatorship in Venezuela, and he renamed the “Asia-Pacific” the “Indo-Pacific” to include India in the larger task of preventing Chinese hegemony in Asia. Trump has made clear that he is willing to use force to stop North Korea from deploying nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of destroying U.S. cities — which has prompted China to finally put real pressure on Pyongyang. We’ll see if it works.

The record of achievement suggests that, despite the noxious tweets and self-inflicted wounds emanating from the White House, Trump has the potential to become one of the most consequential conservative presidents in modern American history. The question is: Does all this good outweigh the bad? We’ll review the 10 worst things Trump has done in Friday’s column.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++