The above picture is of The Maduro Maidens!
How a dear friend and fellow memo reader watched SOTU.
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Did Trump's speechwriter(s) set the Democrats up by constructing his address in a manner that caused them to stand and applaud at times and then immediately reverse on them, causing them to look foolish when they hypocritically did not stand and applaud? Did the Democrats get flimflammed? Did Trump manipulate "Upchuck" and Pelosi and the "snowflake" Doe's?
I would not put it past him. You decide.
At the same time will history show Trump outsmarted himself by playing to his core constituency in a manner that lost him needed voters thereby, diminishing his re-election prospects because he could not constrain himself and went overboard in his boorish ways and un-necessarily mauling the truth? Time will tell.
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Democrats claim they are not for big government, they are not control freaks. They simply like to dress in white and want to help you out of everything you have in order to help others. (See 1 below.)
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The Trump haters accuse him of everything under the sun. However, in his SOTU address Trump laid out some events that suggest he understands moral clarity. In his speech he sought to "wall" in Pelosi and directed his comments to the Democrat bigots that have burrowed their way into that party and become their adoring spokespersons.Trump did not pull punches.
When I compare his policies to that of Obama and other presidents Trump has chosen a different path. He is a Patton who says what is on his mind and that is both refreshing and prospectively might produce results. It is always preferable to be confronted by reality than to avoid reality. This is what a good businessman knows and why so many politicians and diplomats fail. (See 2 and 2a below.)
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Dick
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1) Who’s Afraid of Socialism?
The new Democratic agenda sure looks like government control over the means of production.
The Editorial Board
Now that Donald Trump has criticized the “new calls to adopt socialism in this country,” Democrats and the media are already protesting that the socialist label doesn’t apply to them. But what are they afraid of—the label or their own ideas? The biggest political story of 2019 is that Democrats are embracing policies that include government control of ever-larger chunks of the private American economy.
The U.S. may not be Venezuela, but consider the Democratic agenda that is emerging from Congress and the party’s presidential contenders. You decide if the proposals meet the definition of socialism.
• Medicare for All. Bernie Sanders’ plan, which has been endorsed by 16 other Senators, would replace all private health insurance in the U.S. with a federally administered single-payer health-care program. Government would decide what care to deliver, which drugs to pay for, and how much to pay doctors and hospitals. Private insurance would be banned.
As Senator Kamala Harris put it recently on CNN, “the idea is that everyone gets access to medical care, and you don’t have to go through the process of going through an insurance company, having them give you approval, going through the paperwork, all of the delay that may require. Who of us has not had that situation, where you’ve got to wait for approval, and the doctor says, well, I don’t know if your insurance company is going to cover this? Let’s eliminate all of that. Let’s move on.”
If replacing private insurance with government control isn’t socialism, what is?
• The Green New Deal. This idea, endorsed by 40 House Democrats and several Democratic presidential candidates, would require that the U.S. be carbon neutral within 10 years. Non-carbon sources provide only 11% of U.S. energy today, so this would mean a complete remake of American electric power, transportation and manufacturing.
Oh, and as imagined by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, all of this would be planned by a Select Committee For a Green New Deal. Soviet five-year plans were more modest.
• A guaranteed government job for all. To assist in this 10-year transformation of society, the Green New Deal’s authors would “provide all members of our society, across all regions and all communities, the opportunity, training and education to be a full and equal participant in the transition, including through a job guarantee program to assure a living wage job to every person who wants one.”
This is no longer a fringe idea. The Center for American Progress, Barack Obama’s think tank, supports a government job for everyone “to counter the effects of reduced bargaining power, technical change, globalization,” and presidential candidate Kirsten Gillibrand tweeted her support for it as an alternative to tax reform.
• A new system for corporate control. Senator Elizabeth Warren wants a new federal charter for businesses with more than $1 billion in annual revenue that would make companies answer to more than shareholders. Employees would elect 40% of directors, who would be obliged to consider “benefits” beyond returns to the owners. This radical redesign of corporate governance would give politicians and their interest groups new influence over private business decisions and assets.
• Vastly higher taxes. These ideas would require much more government revenue, and Democrats are eagerly proposing ways to raise it. Mr. Sanders wants to raise the top death tax rate to 77%. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez wants a new 70% tax rate on high incomes, which is supported by the Democratic intelligentsia. The House Ways and Means Committee is working on a plan to raise the payroll tax to 14.8% from 12.4% on incomes above $400,000.
Never to be outdone on the left, Ms. Warren wants a new 2% “wealth tax” on assets above $50 million and 3% above $1 billion, including assets held abroad. France recently junked its wealth tax because it was so counterproductive, and such a tax has never been levied in America. This is government confiscation merely because someone has earned or saved more money than someone else. Socialism?
These are merely the most prominent proposals. There are many others, such as Ms. Warren’s plan to set up a government-owned generic drug maker that would inevitably put private companies out of business because its cost of capital would be zero.
Some readers might think this is all so extreme it could never happen. But presidential candidates don’t propose ideas they think will hurt them politically. The leftward lurch of Democratic voters, especially the young, means the party could nominate the most left-wing presidential candidate in U.S. history. If other Democratic candidates oppose any or all of this, we’d like to hear them.
The American public deserves to have a debate about all this, lest it sleepwalk into a socialist future it doesn’t want. Credit to Mr. Trump for teeing it up.
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2)The State of the Union is Pro-Jewish
Moral sanity.
On Tuesday, President Trump used his State of the Union address to celebrate the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, call out Iran on its genocidal Jew-hatred, confront anti-Semitism generally, and tie his conception of American greatness to the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps. This was one pro-Jewish speech.
For Trump, recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was, as he put it, a matter of “principled realism.” Based on that realism, his administration “proudly opened the American embassy in Jerusalem.” Nothing here about both sides having to bend or about Israel now having to “do its part for peace.” The president of the United States simply noted that he recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital because it is. And that’s the most powerful thing he could have said on the matter.
On Iran, Trump did something remarkable—he spoke the truth. The president called Iran “the world’s leading state sponsor of terror” and emphasized that “it is a radical regime.” He went on: “We will not avert our eyes from a regime that chants ‘death to America’ and threatens genocide against the Jewish people.” No garbage about make-believe moderate mullahs, no specious conflation of the Iranian people and the regime, no wishful fantasies about Iran’s tyrannical theocracy showing heartening signs, and, finally, no equivocating about the nature of its obsessive anti-Semitism. In all, a welcome return to moral sanity.
After that, Trump talked briefly about anti-Semitism in general. “We must never ignore the vile poison of anti-Semitism, or those who spread its venomous creed,” he said. “With one voice, we must confront this hatred anywhere and everywhere it occurs.” He didn’t couch this point in a larger abstract discussion about accepting people who are different from you, etc. Trump focused on anti-Semitism as the singular phenomenon that it is. And as a result, his concise remarks actually meant something.
In talking about anti-Semitism, he moved on to last October’s shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. Trump honored Timothy Matson, one of the SWAT officers who went into the synagogue and apprehended the killer. He also celebrated the life of Judah Samet, an 81-year-old survivor of both the synagogue shooting and the Holocaust.
This brought Trump back around to his opening theme—the heroism of American soldiers on D-Day. He introduced a second Holocaust survivor, Joshua Kaufman, along with Herman Zeitchik, an American sergeant who stormed the beaches at Normandy. “Almost 75 years later, Herman and Joshua are both together in the gallery tonight—seated side-by-side,” Trump said, “here in the home of American freedom.” The two men—liberated and liberator—rose together for a round of applause.
Trump talked about a great many other things, but it’s remarkable the extent to which his speech acknowledged, celebrated, and urged on America’s doing right by the Jews. It would be welcome enough if he emphasized such things in an address to an exclusively Jewish audience, but this was a State of the Union speech, and so his righteous words were meant to shape our very understanding of America. This takes on additional importance because Congress is now home to some anti-Semites of unprecedented ferocity and because the larger left has failed to call out the Jew-hatred that now permeates its ranks. Say what you want about Trump, this was glorious.
2a) The Folly of Being an ‘Honest Broker’ Between Israel and the Palestinians
This entry was posted in National Security and tagged Donald Trump, Hamas, Israel, Palestinian Authority, Trump Administration. Bookmark the permalink.
The notion that the United States should be an "honest broker" between Israel and the Palestinians has long been a tenet of the American foreign policy establishment. The basic idea is that Washington should claim impartiality in the conflict and be an unbiased mediator in negotiations, equidistant between both sides.
It is worth noting, then, that a senior American official is saying that Donald Trump's White House is not interested in being an honest broker.
"The U.S. is a strong ally of Israel," the anonymous official told the Times of Israel. "The administration, from the president on down, is not embarrassed to defend Israel where Israel needs to be defended."
When asked about the perception that the United States is no longer an honest broker, the official dismissed the notion of impartiality as "a vestige of talking points from decades ago."
"We don't believe that in order for us to work on a peace effort we need to have an equivalency, where we can only say certain things about Israel if at the same time we also say something about the Palestinians," the official added. "Not only does that not work; we don't think it's right. We say what's on our mind; we speak the truth … we cannot solve the conflict without being open and honest."
Is the official right? In theory, the idea of Washington being an honest broker seems sensible. What about in practice?
To reach an answer, it is worth detailing what the role of honest broker entails. In 2009, Michael Singh, the managing director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, explained in an important piece that the position rests on two objective attributes. First, the United States claims impartiality in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, because Washington's interest is in reaching an amicable deal that achieves a lasting peace, not in the substance of the dispute itself. This impartiality, Singh clarified, "should not be confused with indifference or disinterest," as though the United States is a neutral third party. Washington is still pursuing its own national security interests, and therefore has a stake in the resolution. Second, the United States is allied, or at least friendly, with both sides, putting it in a unique diplomatic position to mediate.
Singh expanded on these attributes in 2010, writing that what makes the United States an honest broker "is not equidistance between the two sides, but intimate friendship with both; not indifference to the talks' outcome, but a passionate belief in the two-state solution and a willingness and ability to deploy American influence to see it achieved."
One can debate whether the United States has been an honest broker. The more important question, however, is whether the United States should be an honest broker. The answer is no—in practice, the idea blinds the United States to reality and has proven unable to achieve peace.
Take Singh's criteria and examine the situation. Israel is America's closest ally in the Middle East and one of its closest allies in the world. The Israelis are on the front lines battling enemies of the United States—from Sunni terrorist groups to Iran, and beyond. The Palestinian Authority, meanwhile, supports America's adversaries—most recently Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro—and has even identified the United States as an enemy. Israel also has a thriving democracy, while the Palestinians are divided between the PA's corrupt authoritarianism in the West Bank and Hamas's tyrannical rule in Gaza. Moreover, Israel has repeatedly shown a willingness to compromise for peace. Take the Israeli peace proposal in 2008, which was as good an offer to the Palestinians as any fair-minded observer could wish for. Yet the Palestinians rejected the deal, repeating a pattern that has become all too familiar. The Palestinian leadership even refuses to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, thus rejecting the basis of a two-state solution: two states for two peoples.
How can Washington be impartial?
There is a larger point here: while a two-state solution should be the goal, the creation of a Palestinian state tomorrow, or in the near future, would be disastrous. Put aside Hamas for the moment: Sunni terrorists, Iran, or both would turn a country run independently by the PA into their own personal playgrounds. The PA neither has the strength nor the legitimacy among the Palestinian public to be trusted with such responsibility. Unfortunately, the U.S. government does not recognize this reality.
The status quo, while far from perfect, is really not that bad for the time being. Ask a Palestinian living in the West Bank if they want to trade places with someone in Syria or Yemen, and wait for their response.
Still, the American official's comments to the Times of Israel are encouraging. Interestingly, however, the evidence suggests they do not necessarily represent the views of the president and his administration. Daniel Pipes, president of the Middle East Forum, writes in a recent, must-read op-ed that Trump has actually tried to play the role of honest broker more than many observers realize. Pipes outlines two themes in Trump's comments about the conflict—"neutrality toward Israel and the Palestinians" and "a tilt toward the Palestinians"—providing several quotes to support his claims.
"This drumbeat of comments—about neutrality, suspicion of [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, and expecting Israel to make the larger concessions—signals a potential crisis in U.S.-Israel relations," Pipes writes.
The administration is not expected to release its highly anticipated peace plan until after Israel's elections in early April, so we will know more then. In the meantime, Pipes's provocative take, which breaks with much of the conventional wisdom, is worth considering.
Whatever approach the administration adopts, the United States should stop trying to act as an honest broker. It does not make sense morally or strategically. And beyond that, it has not achieved peace. Just ask Barack Obama.
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