Stella Turns 6, Melania Turns 48. Putin's Surrogates.Kim Offers Very Sound Advice. Stripping Because Muslims Want To Kill Me. Uber Alles!

Back from Stella's 6th birthday party.  Tammy  did most of the baking and it was all beautiful.  The kids were primarily from her school class and they were so well behaved.  The event took place at a  bouncey facility and all seemed to have a good time.

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Prospect of Iran Israel confrontation heightens. (See 1 below.)
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Melania turns 48. Wish her a happy birthday. Were President Trump not a Republican, Melania Trump would be hailed as the second iteration of Jackie Kennedy, for her beauty, style, and poise.

This is a side of Melania that the media won't, and contrast her achievements with the presidential wives that have preceded her. This classy lady deserves much better than she gets in the press, as she stands out as a great American story. Happy birthday Melania:***CLICK HERE TO BEGIN SLIDESHOW***

+++++++++++++++++++++ One of the reasons Putin is able to fight in Syria is he is using surrogate forces and thus his own soldiers are not casualties of the fighting.  Paid mercenaries are dying. (See 2 below.) ++++++++++++++++++++++ Kim offers some of the best advice ever to Trump.  Will  he take it?(See 3 below.) ++++++++++++++++++++++ Israel means what it says. (See 4 below.) +++++++++++++++++++++ While I was in Pittsburgh I read the book written by Osama's sister in law and it was about life in Saudi Arabia and being part of a strict Muslim family. I had a temporary driver's license and therefore, had to go through a full shakedown. Had I known, I would have  brought my pass port.  As I was taking off my shoes, belt etc. I began to think I had to do all of this because some radical Islamist wants to kill me. ---- Another  out of the box thought pertains to UBER.  For those old enough to remember Hitler's rally song was Uber Alles.  As I let my mind wander I began to come up with ads like "Heil an Ubber."  You get the drift? My mind is wired in a weird way. And while I am at it: Breaking Character Breaks Relationships Finally: Go to this site if you want to watch something clever: Bad Lip Reading.com +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Dick +++++++++++++++++++ 1) Mattis, receiving Liberman, warns of ‘likely’ conflict between Israel and Iran

By MICHAEL WILNER

“I can see how it might start, but I am not sure when or where,” the secretary told lawmakers.

WASHINGTON —  Direct conflict between Israeli and Iranian forces is increasingly  likely in Syria as Tehran pursues a permanent military presence there, US  Secretary of Defense James Mattis warned on Thursday. Addressing a congressional panel before hosting his Israeli counterpart, Avigdor  Liberman, at the Pentagon, Mattis said it was “very likely” from his perspective,  “because Iran continues to do its proxy work there through Hezbollah.” Receiving Liberman, Mattis told reporters that he saw no reason for Iran to ship  advanced missiles to Hezbollah through Syria except to threaten Israel. “I can see how it might start, but I am not sure when or where,” the secretary told  lawmakers. Mattis then echoed Liberman’s warning from earlier in the day, issued  through a Saudi newspaper, in which he said Israeli forces would strike Tehran if  Iranian missiles ever hit Tel Aviv. The two met at the Pentagon after Liberman met with US President Donald Trump’s national security advisor, John Bolton; his special representative for international  negotiations, Jason Greenblatt; and his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared  Kushner, at the White House. Iran was the focus of conversation there, as well, according to a statement issued  by Israel’s embassy in Washington. At the hearing, Mattis seemed to question the wisdom of hastily withdrawing from t he Iran nuclear accord, just two weeks shy of a May 12 deadline set by Trump for  US and European diplomats to come up with "fixes" to its most controversial  provisions. Should they fail, Trump is threatening to withdraw the US from the agreement by  reimposing nuclear-related sanctions on Iran lifted by the 2015 deal. Mattis said that criticisms of the agreement are "valid," but that, " obviously,  aspects of the agreement that can be improved upon." The position appeared in  sync with that of French President Emmanuel Macron, who at the White House on  Tuesday proposed expanding on the existing nuclear deal rather than attempting to start from scratch. ​"​I will say it is written almost with an assumption that Iran would try to cheat,​"​ ​Mattis ​told the Senate panel.​ He said he had read the agreement in full several times, including its classified annexes.​ ​"​T​he verification, what is in there, is actually pretty robust as far as our intrusive  ability to get in​.​" Trump says he wants new terms imposed onto the deal by France, Britain,  Germany and the US that will grant international inspectors greater access to Iran's  military sites. He also hopes to impose new restrictions on Iran's ballistic missile  work – inextricably linked to the nuclear warheads they are built to deliver, his  administration says– and to scrap "sunset clauses" in the deal that will allow Tehran to resume much of its nuclear enrichment work. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 2) Mattis Gives Epic Description Of  Russian Mercenary Annihilation   by: Ryan Saavedra Read more at http://trumptrainnews.com/articles/mattis-Thursday, Secretary of Defense James Mattis told the Senate Armed Services  Committee that he ordered Russian mercenaries in Syria to be annihilated once he  found out that they were not part of the Russian military. Mattis revealed that the military used a deconfliction line with Russia to make sure  that forces with which they were engaged in conflict were not part of the Russian  military. Once the military received confirmation from Russia, Mattis ordered U.S.  military forces to destroy the Russian mercenaries, The Washington Free Beacon  reported. "The Russian high command in Syria assured us it was not their people, and my  direction to the chairman was for the force, then, to be annihilated," Mattis said.  "And it was." Mattis added that at this point he couldn't attribute responsibility for who was behind  the Russian mercenaries to the Russian government, noting that there are multiple  forces involved in the operations in Syria.

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3)

How Trump Takes On Obstruction

Focus on the threat to the powers of the presidency, not the president personally.

By Kimberley A. Strassel

President Trump vociferously protests his innocence as Robert Mueller finishes the first year of his Russia investigation. Still, the endless Tweet bleats of “PHONY” and “WITCH HUNT” are doing little to help his cause.

The question is why this high-energy president seems to have fallen for the media claim that his only proactive course is to fire Mr. Mueller. It isn’t. There are two very bold actions the Trump White House could take to reset the Russia dynamic. Both would aid Mr. Trump’s presidency and serve the executive branch and the public in the longer term.

The first is an abrupt overhaul of the president’s legal team and strategy. Mr. Trump has talented lawyers, but not ones skilled at confronting the threat at hand. They continue to fret over his personal liability, when the real threat is to the Constitution—to this presidency and every future one. Mr. Mueller is by all accounts now focused on obstruction of justice. Mr. Trump needs constitutional powerhouses who can swiftly take that issue off the table.

Constitutional lawyer David Rivkin in December argued on these pages that a president’s exercise of the powers of his office cannot legitimately be construed as obstruction of justice. Among those powers are the right to direct law enforcement and to fire executive-branch appointees at will. Whether or not Mr. Trump’s conversations with former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey, or his firing of Mr. Comey, were wise, Mr. Trump was exercising rightful powers. If Congress believes he abused his office, it has the power to impeach. If Congress had the authority to criminalize the exercise of presidential power, or the judiciary to question a president’s motives, the separation of powers would be severely threatened.

Already we are seeing the obstruction narrative threaten other core powers. We are now told it is obstructionist for a president to use his pardon power, as Mr. Trump did with Joe Arpaio and Scooter Libby. We are told that Mr. Trump is obstructing justice by ordering the attorney general to cooperate with congressional document demands. And Team Trump needs to understand that the mere specter is enough to constrain the presidency; Mr. Mueller doesn’t need to bring a charge.

Which is why the president needs a team that focuses on the Constitution, decoupling its defense of Mr. Trump’s presidential powers from his personal legal risk. Example: The president’s lawyers are currently resisting a Mueller interview for fear the president might perjure himself. The correct grounds for refusing should be that the president will not parlay with any special prosecutor engaged in an unconstitutional obstruction probe. He needs a team that immediately goes to federal court to obtain a declaratory judgment that presidents cannot obstruct justice while exercising core powers. This legal clarification is crucial, to pre-empt any Mueller charge or even report. It’s also necessary to make clear that should the House impeach on obstruction, it will not be doing so on grounds that the president violated criminal law.

Simultaneous to legal overhaul, the White House should immediately order the declassification (with redactions for sources and methods) of every underlying document in the Justice Department and FBI counterintelligence probe, including any paper at the State Department, Central Intelligence Agency and any other agencies that were involved. Everything. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants. Emails. Texts. The interviews with dossier author Christopher Steele. The story of how exactly the FBI came into possession of info about Trump aide George Papadopoulos. Details of any as yet undisclosed FBI spying on the Trump campaign.

Mr. Trump’s advisers have warned him off this transparency, on the grounds—yet again—that such a release might be construed as obstructing the Mueller probe. To repeat: The president has ultimate authority over classification, and no exercise of that constitutional power can be obstruction. Even the few documents the public has seen—the Comey memos, the Peter Strzok-Lisa Page texts, a glimpse of one FISA warrant—have created a compelling case that the FBI and Justice Department in 2016 abused their power.

Yes, there are risks of a worrisome declassification precedent. But they are outweighed by the gravity of the threat to the executive branch and the potential loss of faith in law enforcement. The nation has the right to the full story now—to understand better how we ever got to a special counsel, and to put Mr. Mueller’s ultimate findings in context.

The media and anti-Trump elites have created a false choice: that Mr. Trump must either sit back and take it, or go on a firing rampage. He has better options. He can define the terms of this debate and defend the executive branch. And he can enlighten the country. But his time for doing so productively is growing very short.

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4)

Iranians killed in alleged Israeli strike on military site in Syria By  ANNAAHRONHEIM The target was reportedly an underground missile production facility and depot for surface-to-surface missiles.

The Syrian army confirmed that Sunday that several military bases in northern Syria were struck in an attack blamed on Israel by the Hezbollah-affiliated newspaper Al Akhbar. According to official news agency SANA, a military source said that “some military sites in the countryside of Hama and Aleppo provinces were exposed at 10:30 PM to a new aggression with hostile rockets.” The explosions following the strike registered as a 2.6 magnitude earthquake by the European Mediterranean Seismological Center, but the weapons used did not cause the quake. Over 18 people were killed and another 60 were wounded, Sky News Arabia reported citing regime media. Al Akhbar reported the targets of the strike were Syrian army bases being used by Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps and Shi'ite militias with troops from Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Hezbollah’s Al Mayadeen reported missiles also struck targets in the Al-Malikiyah area, north of the Aleppo’s airport.  Iran's Tasnim news agency denied that its bases were hit.  According to some reports the target in Hama, an army base known as Brigade 47, was an underground missile production facility and depot for surface-to-surface missile funded by Iran and built with the help of North Korea. Located near Hama, it was also widely known as a recruitment center for Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias who fight alongside President Bashar Assad's force. Unconfirmed reports stated that an Iranian general was killed in the strike on Brigade 47 and former IDF intelligence chief Major General Amos Yadlin warned of a more volatility if Iranians were indeed killed in the strike. "If the casualties were Syrians, they would simply be another addition to the half million people already killed in the civil war to this day. If they are Iranians, it will be added to the unfinished business they have with us, and then the month of May will be very volatile,” he said on Army Radio. Tensions have risen dramatically between the two arch-enemies in recent months.  In February an armed Iranian drone infiltrated northern Israel in a move which the IDF claims was on a sabotage attack mission. In mid-April a strike on the T4 airbase in Homs province blamed on Israel killed seven IRGC soldiers, including Col. Mehdi Dehghan, who led the drone unit operating out of the base. Reports later surfaced that advanced Iranian Air defenses had been the target of the strike.  Referring to Iran's promises to respond to the alleged attack by Israel on a T-4 base in early April, Yadlin stated that the target of the attack may have been based on intelligence that Iran was preparing the retaliatory strike that Tehran has warned is coming. "We have to investigate whether the attack came in response to weapon transfers to Hezbollah, to Iranian infrastructure being built in Syria or whether there was intelligence about Tehran's possible response and a decision was made to thwart it." According to Michael Horowitz, Director of Intelligence at Le Beck, a Middle East-based geopolitical consulting group, Israel has stepped up its frequency of strikes and the nature of targets which have been attacked have changed. “There’s been a clear change in Israel’s strategy in Syria since last year." According to foreign source, "Israeli strikes are both hitting targets deeper inside Syria and the nature of these targets has change from weapons convoy and depots to actual Iranian bases,” he told The Jerusalem Post. According to Horowitz, the strike on the Taqsis base in Hama “is very significant” as “such factories that produce ballistic missiles could help Iran gain game-changing capabilities to be used in a potential confrontation with Israel, by significantly increasing the number of precision-guided missiles within Hezbollah’s arsenal.  “It is also notable because of the challenge striking such a facility represents. The Taqsis base is built inside a mountain," and Israel, had it carried out the attack, "would have had to use advanced weapons, such as bunker busters, to hit it,” he said, adding that “a successful such strike would send a clear message of deterrence to Iran that even underground facilities (including other missile-production sites in Syria or Lebanon and even nuclear-related sites in Iran) are within Israel’s reach.” Earlier on Sunday Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman stated that the Jewish State would not respond forcibly if any rockets are launched toward Israel or Israeli jets.  “If someone thinks that it is possible to launch missiles to Israeli cities or our aircraft, no doubt we will respond and we will respond very forcefully,” he said at The Jerusalem Post conference in New York when asked by Yaakov Katz, Editor-in-Chief of the Post. “We will keep our freedom of operation in all of Syria. We have no intention to attack Russia or to interfere in domestic Syrian issues. But if somebody thinks that it is possible to launch missiles or to attack Israel or even our aircraft, no doubt we will respond and we will respond very forcefully.” ++++++++++++++++++++++++++