Salena Zito and Erick Erickson Postings. Cair Persists. Pain For Iran?

I failed to post this op ed from Salena Zito in my memo entitled: "Barak "Chutzpah" Hussein Obama. Zito Interviews Buttigieg. Dearborn to Hezbollah and Buenos Aires to Emory University." (See 1 below.)

I also am posting one from Erick Erickson about Pete Buttigieg. (See 1a below.)
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CAIR, the un-indicted terrorist organization, seeks to overturn anti-Semitic laws. (See 2 below.)
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More pain for Iran? (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1) How Pete Buttigieg could hurt Trump in the Rust Belt

By Salena Zito

Just because Buttigieg is from the Rust Belt doesn’t mean he can win a general election in places like Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Pete Buttigieg is many things.

At just 37, he is the mayor of South Bend, Indiana. He is a military veteran and a deeply religious gay man who is married but also enjoys sandwiches from the (anti-gay marriage) Chick-fil-A. He is a Harvard-educated Rhodes scholar who speaks eight languages. He is the first-ever millennial candidate for president and, so far, the only Democratic hopeful to appear on the “Fox News Sunday” show.

“I’m all of those things,” said Buttigieg — pronounced “Boot-edge-edge” — in an interview with The Post. But “I try not to have any kind of attribute … be totally defining.”

Critics say these attributes are the very reasons why he can’t beat Donald Trump. His supporters say they are the very reasons he can.

Mayor Pete, as he likes to be called, strikes a tone that is kinder and less combative than the insult-driven politics of Trump and the Democratic party’s far-left members. His boyish good looks, intelligence and military background are undoubtedly appealing, as is his faith.

“Scripture tells us to look after the least among us, that it also counsels humility and teaches us about what’s bigger than ourselves,” said Buttigieg, a devout Episcopalian. “It points the way toward an inclusive and unselfish politics that I strive to practice, whether I’m talking about my faith on the stump or not.”

Mayor Pete’s politics are already gaining traction. Since launching his exploratory committee to run for president on Jan. 23, Buttigieg has already raised $7 million for his campaign. A recent Quinnipiac poll found that 4 percent of Democrats would vote for him — the same number that supports Elizabeth Warren, who has been a US senator for six years.

The fact he is born and bred in the American Rust Belt is possibly his biggest asset.

“Our party can and should do better in the industrial Midwest,” Buttigieg said. “I’m convinced that so many people in this part of the country are already with us, much more than with the other party on issues, on substance, on policy.”

He said his experience in South Bend proves there are solutions that work besides a “promise to turn back the clock.”

When Buttigieg was first elected to office in his hometown of South Bend in 2011, the city was on its knees. Job growth was nonexistent and like many Rust Belt cities with declining industry, it had been hemorrhaging jobs since the ’70s.

First, he improved the cosmetics of the town by demolishing more than 1,000 abandoned homes, and then focused on revitalizing it by attracting hundreds of millions in private investment for commercial development.

You won’t find Buttigieg ridiculing fellow Midwestern voters or taking them for granted, the way Hillary Clinton’s campaign did in 2015. After the University of Notre Dame, based in South Bend, invited her to attend their prestigious St. Patrick’s Day event, her campaign declined, telling organizers “white Catholics were not the audience she needed to spend time reaching out to,” according to The New York Times.

Trump would go on to win those white Catholic votes in 2016 — 52 percent of them, according to Pew’s exit polls, reversing the gains Democrats made when Barack Obama earned their votes in 2008 and 2012.

Even so, Buttigieg’s religious beliefs haven’t prevented him from taking progressive positions on major issues.

He supports abortions into the third trimester out of a belief in “freedom from government,” he said. And he won’t rule out tax hikes. “If the only way I can get all of us paid parental leave, universal health care, dramatically improved child care, better education, good infrastructure and, therefore, longer life expectancy and a healthier economy is to raise revenue, then we should be honest about that.”

And although natural gas leads to good, solid jobs in the Rust Belt, he is a big booster of wind and solar power. “I think the goal still has to be focused on renewables,” he said.

But just because Buttigieg has a progressive platform doesn’t mean he’ll get an easy ride from far-left Democrats. Last month the woke crowd at Slate questioned the young mayor’s credentials with a headline that read: “Is Pete Buttigieg just another white male candidate, or does his gayness count as diversity?”

And just because Buttigieg is from the Rust Belt doesn’t mean he can win a general election in places like Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, especially when you compare his platform to Trump’s.

“He has to share their values on bread-and-butter issues like lower taxes, regulations and religious liberty,” warned G. Terry Madonna, director of the center for politics at Franklin and Marshall College.

If he doesn’t, “it would be very difficult for him to win.”

But Jeff Rea, a former Republican mayor from another Indiana town, said nobody should count out Mayor Pete. Currently, the South Bend Chamber president, Rea said he and Buttigieg have been on opposite sides on a number projects but have “always found a way to come together for a solution.”

Buttigieg “is a very data-driven guy and also a very good man,” Rea added. “That has helped him win over voters who might not like progressive politics.”

No mayor has ever run and won their party’s nomination for president in our history, nor has anyone under the age of 43. Then again, no businessman had ever done it until Trump came along either.

Michael Wear, the faith adviser to President Barack Obama, told me he thinks Mayor Pete has a chance.

“Things change,” Wear said. “And, in America, anything can happen.”

1a)

Pete Buttigieg is Winning the Only Race That Matters Right Now By Erick Erickson

The media erection (my apologies if you are offended, but you know it is an accurate description) for Pete Buttigieg has gone well past four hours and most of the Circle of Jerks that make up the DC press corps should really be in the hospital right now seeking treatment from a doctor.

To be clear, I’m not talking about the interviews on Sunday shows and roundtable discussions. In fact, you really should check out Chuck Todd’s interview from yesterday. I’ll have more to say on that later today. The man is a mayor of a big city and is running for President. The Sunday shows, etc. are expected.

What I am talking about, however, is the positively hagiographic coverage and tweets from millennial members of the press corps and some of their senior brethren who are positively gaga over the guy. They are having a hard time feigning objectivity at this point. The coverage is Betoesque.

In 2018, Beto O’Rourke got such fawning, hagiographic, near pornographic coverage from the media that Republicans had to yell in unison to point out O’Rourke had fled from a wreck he caused while drunk. The national press did their level best to ignore the story. They were flat out enamored.

Now it is Buttigieg’s turn, ironically in a race where Beto O’Rourke has cast himself as the youthful presence against Washington.

I suspect, however, that there is a problem in this. While the DC Circle of Jerks is suffering priapism over Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Beto, Biden, and more are digging up anything they can on the guy. The women will start clamoring and Harris can probably take over the spotlight with a “woman of color” angle that privileged white Pete cannot withstand.

All of this, though, will probably get overshadowed by Biden. The stories and flirtation with Buttigieg will get drowned out by the attacks on Biden and the defenses of Biden. Buttigieg will more likely than not wind up being the warm up act. Perhaps he can warm up into the VP slot, but if it is Biden or Bernie, having two white males probably won’t work.
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2)

CAIR: Defending the Right to Be Anti-Semitic

By The Clarion Project

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is openly advocating for the government’s right to be anti-Semitic. Here’s how:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued an “action alert” to voice its opposition to the newly proposed “Anti-Semitism Awareness Act of 2019” in Congress.

The act directs Department of Education to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism, which has been officially adopted by the U.S. and 31 other nations, including the UK, Germany and other European nations.

The definition addresses traditional and current forms of anti-Semitism, specifically labeling as anti-Semitism anything that “[applies] double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of by any other democratic nation [in the world].”

Accordingly, the Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement is by definition anti-Semitic. For example, there are at least 100 land disputes across the globe that are not subject to “BDS” movements.

CAIR’s leaders are heavily invested in supporting the BDS movement, particularly across college campuses in the U.S. The BDS movement aims to strangle the Jewish state economically while at the same time calls for the flooding of Palestinians into Israel to destroy the Jewish character of the state.

While the BDS movement purports to be about Palestinian rights, voices in support of BDS have been deafeningly silent about the horrific abuse of Palestinians who moved decades ago to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon during the Arab states’ war with Israel in 1948.

On a state level, CAIR has been busy bringing law suits against individual states who have passed anti-BDS legislation.

In their current lawsuits against the state of Texas and Arkansas, CAIR has brought the new argument that anti-BDS legislation infringes on their First Amendment right to free speech, essentially saying that legislation against anti-Semitism infringes on their right to be anti-Semites.

However, while it is every individual’s right in the U.S. to hold and express opinions no matter how despicable they are (as long they do not lead to immediate violence), it is not the Constitutional right of the government to act in a way that discriminates based on religion, as specified by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

CAIR is worried that if the U.S. Department of Education adopts this accepted definition of anti-Semitism, it will crimp their style along with other Islamists on college campuses (among other areas of influence) to incite hatred of Israel. As CAIR says, “[The legislation] would dangerously politicize anti-Semitism by equating it with legitimate criticism of Israeli policy.”

This is the canard that CAIR and other Islamists consistently pull out when confronted with their own anti-Semitic statements. For example, after tweeting classic anti-Semitic tropes (that rich Jews control politicians with their money; that Jews have dual loyalty to the U.S. and Israel), newly elected Congresswoman Ilhan Omar lashed out her detractors, claiming that they were trying to prevent her (and other like her) from have a legitimate discussion about America’s policy  toward Israel.

CAIR is listed by the U.S. government among “individuals/entities who are/were members of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee and/or its organizations.” The Palestine Committee was a secret body set up to advance the Brotherhood/Hamas agenda in the U.S.

In 1993, the committee organized a secret meeting in Philadelphia that was wiretapped by the FBI where participants, including CAIR’s executive director Nihad Awad, discussed how to support the terror group Hamas. The committee decided there was a need to create a new, “neutral” entity for influencing U.S. policy and opinion since “it is known who we are.”

Awad co-founded CAIR the next year. It has since been designated (in 2014) as a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates along with a host of other Muslim Brotherhood entities.

In 2007, the U.S. government labeled CAIR an unindicted co-conspirator in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation for financing Hamas, which the U.S. designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 1997. The Holy Land trial was the largest case of terror financing in the history of the U.S.

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3)

U.S. decision on Revolutionary Guards could further damage Iran’s economy

By MAYA MARGIT/THE MEDIA LINE

A reported decision by the US to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a “terrorist organization” could significantly damage the Islamic Republic’s already failing economy, analysts believe.

President Donald Trump’s administration is set to announce the move in the coming days, according a report in the Wall Street Journal. If it comes to pass, it would mark the first time Washington officially labeled another country’s military a “terrorist” entity.

Dr. Raz Zimmt, an expert on Iran at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv, told The Media Line that such a decision had “the potential to cause a lot of damage,” but he was unsure it would ultimately be an effective strategy.

“It will be very difficult, if not impossible, to really trace all individuals and companies involved in economic activities linked to the IRGC,” Zimmt explained.

As an example, he cited an oil worker employed by a company with links to the IRGC.

“Is [this worker] considered to be someone who would be under sanctions? I don’t know exactly what the US administration is prepared to do,” he noted.

The IRGC was established by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini following the 1979 Islamic Revolution in a bid to consolidate several paramilitary forces and protect the country’s Islamic system of law. Its reach has evolved such that it now also controls a significant portion of the country’s economy, including its nuclear program and key sectors of the oil, gas and telecommunications industries, as well as major infrastructure projects.

Some estimate that the IRGC controls anywhere from 10 percent to 33% of the entire Iranian economy via subsidiaries and trusts.

“Saying that as a whole the IRGC is a terror organization means that actually millions of Iranians are members of a terror organization,” Zimmt elaborated, adding that men in the Islamic Republic between the ages of 18 and 20 must serve in the military, and many are therefore recruited into the IRGC.

“The bottom line is that, yes, the IRGC controls quite a significant segment of the Iranian economy, but it will take many efforts to see which individuals and companies are indeed related to the organization,” he stressed.

Adding complexity to the issue, according to Zimmt, is the fact that the IRGC’s main activities in the missile and nuclear programs are already under sanction. The same goes for the Quds Force, an elite armed wing of the IRGC, which carries out activities in other countries across the Middle East and farther afield.

The Trump Administration’s upcoming move would mark an escalation in the White House’s increasingly harsh strategy toward Tehran, and comes amid recent reports that the US is preparing to impose additional economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic in the coming months.

Dr. Eldad Pardo, an Iranian affairs expert at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told The Media Line the move would also heighten the impact of economic sanctions already in place since Trump reimposed them last year.

“It’s one thing to breach American sanctions, but it’s another to support a terrorist organization, so it will add to the fears that some businesspeople feel when dealing with Iran,” Pardo stated.

“Basically, if you want to deal with Iran, you have to deal with the Revolutionary Guards because they are involved in everything,” he said.

“It’s not a smart business decision to invest in a country that is in direct confrontation with the United States,” he added. “The great majority of the Iranian people want to stick with the nuclear deal; they want to open the economy; they want a transformation of the regime. This will add to that pressure.”

Pardo concluded by saying: “Of course, the policy will be judged by its implementation. The goal is not to destroy Iran, but to force it to change its policies.”
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