I thought as much: https://www.snopes.com/fact-
That Jarrett quote is fake. She was born in Iran but both her parents are African American.
More revelations from Rhodes' forthcoming tell all book.
Remember, Rhodes is the one who told about how Obama hoodwinked America in order to get his Iran Deal. When it comes to lying, Rhodes outdoes Comey et al.(See 1 below.)
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Leftist College handbook for the politically correct crowd that wants to intimidate you so they can take away your freedoms under the guise of their caring for the downtrodden and deprived.. (See 2 below.)
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Serious issues facing Israel. (See 3 below.)
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I recently posted an article by Victor Davis Hanson about how the post world war order was no more. In his article Hanson did not discuss the irrelevance of The U.N. I say irrelevance because the U.N is nothing more than a platform for each nation to present its views with the understanding and acceptance nothing basically positive will happen.
If the U.N serves to dissipate heat then it has some validity. If it simply exists toreveal its own failure then it serves little productive purpose.
At the very least we probably would be wise to move the U.N. to another nation , cut the money we allocate to this dinosaur and we would save a great deal of expense.
Again just my thoughts about this tired and laughable relic.
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Will McCabe be charged? (See 4 below.)
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Sardonic humor:
"It isn't premarital sex if you have no intention of getting married."
George Burns
"Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same."
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde
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Putin and Bibi talk. (See 5 below.)
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1)
The World As It Wasn’t
Column: Barack Obama's revealing reaction to Donald Trump's victory
Maybe you can help me out. I'm puzzling over a line in a New York Times story on The World As It Is, the forthcoming memoir from Barack Obama's deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes. The article, by Peter Baker, is about the parts of Rhodes's book that deal with Donald Trump's surprise victory over Hillary Clinton.
"In the weeks after Mr. Trump's election," Baker reports, "Mr. Obama went through multiple emotional stages," including flashes of "anger," "rare self-doubt," and taking "the long view." Do not think, however, that during the final weeks of his presidency Barack Obama was withdrawn or more self-obsessed than usual. People needed him. The day after the election, Baker continues, "Mr. Obama focused on cheering up his despondent staff."
For example—and here is the line that confuses me—"he sent a message to Mr. Rhodes saying, ‘There are more stars in the sky than grains of sand on the earth.'"
Say what? How does a dimly remembered Carl Sagan quote relate to 2016? Was Obama speaking in code? Was this an example of him taking the "long view"—implying that lol nothing matters because we are all cosmic dust adrift in the void? Was he suggesting the planet might be saved from Trump by an alien invasion? It sounds like the message you'd find inside an especially pretentious fortune cookie.
Obama's words once again revealed his colossal lack of self-awareness. The passages of The World As It Is that Baker quotes in his piece reinforce the widespread impression of our forty-fourth president as an aloof, smug, vainglorious chief executive totally divorced from political reality. The shock, disgust, confusion, and horror with which Obama and his team greeted the election results exemplified the very attitudes toward democratic procedure and populist conservatism that fueled Trump's rise. The only lesson Barack Obama drew from the election was confirmation of his own moral superiority.
Even the former president's moments of "self-doubt" were framed as opportunities for lackeys to remind him of his greatness. Rhodes describes a ride in the presidential limousine during which Obama asked, "What if we were wrong?" A leading question no matter the situation, particularly when the man posing it is president of the United States. What did Obama expect Rhodes to say—"Yes, Mr. President, we royally screwed the pooch?"
Apparently Obama had read a column—I have an idea of which one—about the role of identity in shaping peoples' lives and political choices. "Maybe we pushed too far," he mused. "Maybe people just want to fall back into their tribe." No question his fellow passengers that day reassured him that no, no, he did everything he could to bend the arc of history a little more toward justice. It's not your fault, Mr. President. You didn't push too far. All you did was troll Donald Trump into running for president in the first place, stand by while Ferguson and Baltimore rioted and burned, give Iran billions in exchange for empty promises, allow Russia to establish a beachhead in the Middle East for the first time in half a century, browbeat Israel at every opportunity, ram through Obamacare after Scott Brown's election in Massachusetts, preside over the mass migration of children across the southern border in 2014, expand the DACA amnesty despite saying 22 times you lacked authority to do so, use the permanent structure of government to devastate the Appalachian economy, convince half of America that liberals were ready to take their guns (this wasn't hard to do), have your Education Department issue orders that led to the campus-assault craze and the deterioration of classroom discipline and that, months before a presidential election, mandated trans-bathrooms in schools, have your Justice Department preside over a sloppy (I'm being charitable) investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server that included, at one point, your attorney general secretly meeting with the husband of the subject of the investigation on an airport tarmac, muscle out Joe Biden, who might have won, from the race, and hand the party back to the less-likable half of America's most polarizing and corrupt political couple. Not to mention the eight years of lecturing. Oh, the lecturing.
One of the refrains of the Obama presidency was that, yes, America may have let Obama down in the past, and America may let him down still, but America remains worthwhile, so long as it maintains the capacity to become more like Obama. "Sometimes I wonder whether I was 10 or 20 years too early," he says in the book. What was he early for? "Fundamentally transforming America"? "The moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow"? For the death of the olds who stood in his way?
Imagine carrying the burden of Barack Obama, of being too enlightened, sophisticated, mature for his time. In his conceit that historical progress is assured and irreversible, and that challenges to such progress are reducible to irrational prejudice, Obama is a paradigmatic liberal. Yet America's frequent elections, tendency to rotate offices, decentralization of power, avenues for the expression of popular discontent, and multiple veto points continually frustrated his desires. By the end of his second term, he was expending a great deal of energy working around the constitutional structure established in 1789 and amended 27 times since.
Rhodes gives us a glimpse of Obama's interactions with the political leader he most resembles. "Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany told Mr. Obama that she felt more obliged to run for another term because of Mr. Trump's election to defend the liberal international order," Peter Baker reports. "When they parted for the final time, Ms. Merkel had a single tear in her eye. ‘She's all alone,' Mr. Obama noted."
One tear: How noble, how poetic, how sad. Poor Angela. She crushes Greece in a vice, destabilizes an entire continent by inviting a million Muslim immigrants into Germany, and this is the thanks she gets: Brexit and Trump. It never seems to have dawned on either Obama or Merkel that the only people truly invested in defending the always-vaguely-defined "liberal international order" are the men and women who sit at the top of it. Certainly the voters are not as satisfied with current circumstances as they.
Last year, it was Merkel's turn for electoral repudiation. Then Italians repudiated their elites last March. Unlike their American counterparts, however, the undemocratic liberals of Europe have sophisticated ways of bypassing popular sentiment. Obama must be envious. No third term for him, either literally or figuratively. Instead Hillary is out, Angela is alone, and Obama is left with his $65 million book deal, his "high-8-figure" Netflix deal, and, above all, his vanity intact.
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3) Be kind to misunderstood terrorists? Israel has some serious issues to deal with
By Caroline B. Glick
Israel has a problem with its security brass. And this week we received several reminders that the situation needs to be dealt with.
Since the Hamas regime in Gaza announced in March that it was planning to have civilians swarm the border with Israel, through this week’s Hamas-Islamic Jihad mortar and rocket assault on southern Israel, the IDF General Staff has been insisting there is only one thing Israel can do about Gaza.
According to our generals, Israel needs to shower Hamas with stuff. Food, medicine, water, electricity, medical supplies, concrete, cold hard cash, whatever Hamas needs, Israel should just hand it over in the name of humanitarian assistance.
Every single time reporters ask the generals what Israel can do to end Hamas’s jihadist campaign, they give the same answer. Let’s shower them with stuff.
The fact that the Palestinian Authority is blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza makes no impression on the generals. For months now, PA chief Mahmoud Abbas has refused to pay salaries to Hamas regime employees or pay for Gaza’s electricity and fuel. Hamas, for its part, destroyed the Kerem Shalom cargo terminal two weeks ago, blocking all transfer of gas and food to Gaza. And this week it blew up its electricity lines with a misfired mortar aimed at Israel.
Hamas’s determination to use civilians as human shields for its terrorists is a pretty clear message that it does not care about the people it controls. But for whatever reason, it didn’t register with the General Staff. As residents of the South were rushing to bomb shelters every 10 minutes or so on Tuesday, generals were briefing reporters that Israel must give them medicine.
When Hamas then refused to receive medical supplies from Israel, the generals doubled down and said that the only card Israel has to play is to give Gaza humanitarian aid. And they told reporters that their job at the next security cabinet meeting will be to convince Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ministers that Israel needs to give the Hamas regime stuff.
Then there is the issue of terrorist bodies.
Hamas holds the bodies of Lt. Hadar Goldin and St.-Sgt. Oron Shaul, both killed in action during Operation Protective Edge in 2014. Hamas also holds Israeli civilian hostages Avra Mengistu and Hisham a-Suwaid.
In January 2017, the security cabinet decided that Israel will retain the bodies of terrorists rather than transfer them to Palestinian authorities for burial. The purpose of the decision was to pressure Hamas to release the Israeli hostages and remains of the IDF personnel it holds.
Despite the cabinet decision, since the cabinet made its decision, Israel has transferred to Hamas the bodies of five terrorist murderers. Each time, the IDF General Staff stood behind the move.
Currently, the government is holding the body of Hamas terrorist Aziz Awisat who just died in prison.
Media reports indicate the IDF is pushing for the government to appease Hamas again and transfer his body to Gaza for burial. To block the move, Goldin’s parents petitioned the High Court on Monday and demanded the government inform them 72 hours in advance of any transfer of a terrorist’s body to Hamas. The government agreed to the Goldin family’s demand on Thursday morning.
It is inarguable that these bodies of terrorists are valuable bargaining chips in the government’s efforts to repatriate its hostages and the remains of its soldiers. The fact that the IDF General Staff repeatedly undercuts the government’s efforts to secure their release, by surreptitiously transferring the terrorists’ bodies to Hamas, is of a piece with its irrational belief that it is Israel’s responsibility to ensure a quality of life for denizens of Hamasland.
If the IDF General Staff’s chronic insubordination on behalf of Hamas terrorists weren’t enough, there’s also Iran.
In 2012, former Mossad director Meir Dagan first revealed to celebrity leftist reporter Ilana Dayan that in 2010 he went behind Netanyahu’s back and informed then-US defense secretary Leon Panetta that Netanyahu had just ordered the IDF and the Mossad to prepare an attack against Iran’s nuclear installations.
In 2016, after Dagan passed away, Dayan released a tell-all interview with Dagan where he detailed precisely how he blocked Netanyahu’s order; Dagan told Dayan that he used both the Obama administration, and an appeal to Israel’s legal establishment, to block Netanyahu from ordering the IDF and Mossad to attack Iran’s nuclear installations.
On Thursday morning, Dayan was at it again.
Her show, Uvda, released a preview of an interview set to air that evening with Dagan’s successor, recently retired Mossad chief Tamir Pardo. In his interview, Pardo relates that a year after Dagan scuttled Netanyahu’s order to prepare an attack against Iran’s nuclear installations, it was Pardo’s turn.
Pardo told Dayan that in 2011, Netanyahu again ordered the Mossad and the IDF to prepare the security services to attack Iran’s nuclear installations within 15 days. Pardo told Dayan that as he saw it, he had two choices: comply or resign.
So he chose a third option: legal subterfuge.
Dagan insisted at the Jerusalem Post Conference in 2015 that Netanyahu did not have the legal authority to order an attack against Iran. Only the security cabinet had the authority, he said. Dagan said he demanded that Netanyahu receive the approval of the security cabinet for the attack.
Apparently, Dagan based his legal position on a unique interpretation of the law regarding authority to declare war.
Under the law, the security cabinet is authorized to declare war. Dagan decided that Netanyahu’s order to strike Iran’s nuclear installations constituted a declaration of war. And so he said Netanyahu lacked the authority to order the attack. Perhaps afraid that he wouldn’t have the votes, perhaps afraid his plans would leak in the larger forum, Netanyahu stood down.
Pardo told Dayan that like Dagan, to get out of his dilemma of obeying Netanyahu’s order or resigning, he applied Dagan’s radical interpretation of the law to Netanyahu’s order.
Instead of resigning, or preparing the attack, Pardo said he went behind Netanyahu’s back to then-attorney-general Yehuda Weinstein, to get him to sign on to the Dagan-Pardo legal theory of what constitutes a declaration of war. And just as Pardo assumed would happen, Netanyahu stood down again.
Thanks to Pardo and Dagan, Iran’s nuclear expansion went on unimpeded. Thanks to Pardo and Dagan, then-US president Barack Obama had a clear path to negotiate his 2015 nuclear deal with the mullahs that gave them an open path to a nuclear arsenal by 2025 and $150 billion to finance their regional aggression.
Early last month, the media and opposition lawmakers expressed outrage when the Knesset amended the law for declaring war. Under the amended law, under certain extreme circumstances, the prime minister and defense minister are empowered to declare war without security cabinet approval.
The media and opposition lawmakers presented the amendment as an arbitrary move. Netanyahu, the commentators and opposition lawmakers insisted, was giving himself dictatorial powers.
Cabinet ministers were embarrassed into action.
Last week, they voted to freeze the amendment and retain all power to declare war, even in extreme circumstances, in the cabinet’s hands.
Given that the normal interpretation of the phrase, “power to declare war,” would not include “power to order a strike against an enemy state’s nuclear installations,” no one made the connection between the amended law and the subversive behavior of two Mossad directors. No one realized that the purpose of the amendment was to prevent insubordination at the top levels of the security community. No one realized that the move was a means to ensure Israel’s elected leaders have the minimal authority they require to order the military and the intelligence services to take actions they deem necessary to ensure the national security of Israel.
But now, with Pardo’s interview, and recalling Dagan’s subversive actions, the need for the amendment is obvious.
It is past time for Israel’s political leaders to rein in our generals. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.
Israel’s civilian responsibility for Gaza ended the moment the last soldier shut the gate.
Hamas is not Israel’s enemy because it lacks money or electricity. It is Israel’s enemy because it is a jihadist terrorist group committed to the annihilation of the Jewish people. No amount of free electricity or medicine will change this basic truth.
Hamas will not transfer the bodies of Israel’s fallen soldiers or release the Israelis it holds hostage because Israel gives it money or concrete. Hamas will not embrace Israel if Israel purifies the Gaza water supply which Hamas deliberately polluted by over-drilling.
The fact that the IDF General Staff hasn’t figured this out does not speak well of our generals’ cognitive capabilities.
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4)
Will McCabe Be Charged?
A new report claims that investigators from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C., recently interviewed former FBI Director James Comey in relation to the Justice Department’s investigation of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horrowitz issued a criminal referral for McCabe in April — which led to his eventual firing — on the grounds that he intentionally misled DOJ officials on four separate occasions.
A source familiar with the investigation told the Washington Post the Comey interview indicates officials are seriously weighing criminal charges for McCabe, which are not guaranteed in a referral.
“A little more than a month ago, we confirmed that we had been advised that a criminal referral to the U.S. Attorney’s Office had been made regarding Mr. McCabe,” Michael Bromwich, McCabe’s attorney, told the Post when asked about the new revelations. “We said at that time that we were confident that, unless there is inappropriate pressure from high levels of the Administration, the U.S. Attorney’s Office would conclude that it should decline to prosecute. Our view has not changed.”
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5)
5)
Russian President Vladimir Putin And Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu Had A Telephone Conversation
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on Thursday, 31 May 2018) spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The two discussed regional developments and the Iranian presence in Syria. (Communicated by the Prime Minister's Media Adviser)
MOSCOW, May 31. 2018/TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had a telephone conversation on Thursday, the Kremlin press service said.
“As a follow-up to the May 9 talks in Moscow, the two sides discussed some aspects of the Syrian peace settlement and the pressing issues on the bilateral agenda,” the report said.
Netanyahu made a working visit to Russia on May 9. He attended the traditional V-Day parade on Red Square, after which Putin and he held the talks, mostly focusing on the situation in Syria.
Earlier on Thursday, the problem of Syrian peace settlement came in the focus of talks between the Russian Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu, and Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman
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