No Rational Alternative.

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Hypocrisy is a human trait that has existed since "man" walked on earth so I am not claiming Democrats  are engaged in a new trend but let's look at a few recent instances.

First, California has outlawed straws yet feces and needles in the street are acceptable while the Greens focus on climate, a clean earth and the atmosphere.  Hypocrisy?

Second, the Prime Minister of Canada, apologizes for racial activities and is given a pass as were three  key politicians in Virginia who acknowledged they engaged in similar practices. They too remain in office and we hear silence.  Does anyone in his right mind believe had it been a prominent Republican they would have enjoyed the same lack of a response. Hypocrisy? (See 1 below.)

Third, this week we learned The New York Times failed to mention two of their staff members were allowed to post an accusative article without any semblance of traditional checks by superiors. The victim of course not only was a Republican but also the newly appointed Supreme Court Justice, Kavanaugh, who had already been forced to  run the gauntlet during his nomination process. Hypocrisy?

I continue to believe the biased hypocritical  actions by the mass media are not only offensive but will also eventually be a significant contributing factor should Trump be re-elected. Furthermore, I believe the persistent witch hunt engaged in by the likes of Nadler, Schiff, Pelosi, Schumer, the four radicals, who have hung the Democrats  out to dry,  plus the infidel candidates running to defeat Trump and the failure of the Mueller Investigation along with the constant berating of Trump and everything he tries to do, is offensive and not in keeping with American values and fair play.

Now the Trump haters are chasing a Ukraine telephone call from a whistle blower.

Trump is his own man, expresses himself in a non- traditional and coarse,blunt manner.  He is incapable of admitting mistakes, is narcissistic and perhaps rightfully insecure in a role he has never played before.  That said, he is also a doer, he is impatient at the pace of politics, he is willing to touch third rails that have been a source of America's decline and, most of all, he is driven by common sense.  His efforts, achievements, against all odds and efforts to bring him down, are remarkable and without precedence.

Those who hate him and are in opposition to him offer few reasonable answers.  The ones they do offer are so outside the mainstream of what our nation is all about  that they are downright ludicrous.

Most important of all,  Trump inherited an America that allowed itself to be taken advantage of and, in a political sense, the wheels have come off the tracks.  Our adversaries have made enormous strides in a commercial, strategic and military sense while our pitiful allies have willingly let us carry a disproportionate load.

Trump is doing his best but his best will never satisfy those who hate him and who cannot accept his legitimate victory..Their ultimate goal is the destruction of our republic.  They actually hate this country, it's history and  record of our selfless achievements which have made this world a better place.  I hate to think where this world would be were it not for America's sacrifices.  We are not perfect but set against China, Russia, Iran and the insane Islamist terrorists there is no rational alternative.
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Our military tries to stay ahead.  (See 2 below.)
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Regime change best policy? (See 3 below.)
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Glick on the Israeli election. (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1) TRUDEAU APOLOGIZES AFTER BROWN FACE PICS UNCOVERED

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau issued an apology after a yearbook photo showing him in brownface makeup at a costume party for the private school he taught at surfaced.

• Time magazine published the photo of Trudeau with dark makeup, dressed as a character from the movie “Aladdin” for an “Arabian Nights” themed party for the school.
• Trudeau told reporters, “I’m pissed off at myself, I’m disappointed in myself.,” and added, “It was something I should not have done. I didn’t think it was racist at the time, but now I see, it was a racist thing to do.”
• In the apology, Trudeau also admitted to another time where he wore an afro and was in blackface while singing the song “Day-O” in a high school talent show.
• There’s an additional report by Global News of a possible third instance of the Canadian Prime Minister in blackface in the video shown here.
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• 2) 

  MQ-25 Completes First Test Flight

• Boeing and the U.S. Navy successfully completed the first test flight of the MQ-25 unmanned aerial refueler. The MQ-25 test asset, known as T1, completed the autonomous flight under the direction of Boeing test pilots operating from a ground control station at MidAmerica St. Louis Airport in Mascoutah, Ill. The aircraft completed an autonomous taxi and takeoff and then flew a pre-determined route. The test validated the aircraft’s basic flight functions and operations with the ground control station.
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  The MQ-25 will provide the Navy with a much-needed carrier-based unmanned aerial refueling capability.
  “The flight of this test asset two years before our first MQ-25 arrives represents the first big step in a series of early learning opportunities that are helping us rapidly progress towards delivery of a game-changing capability for the carrier air wing and strike group commanders,” said the Navy’s Unmanned Carrier Aviation (PMA-268) Program Manager Capt. Chad Reed.
  The Boeing-owned test asset is a predecessor to the engineering development model (EDM) aircraft and is being used for early learning and discovery to meet the goals of the U.S. Navy’s accelerated acquisition program. Boeing will produce four EDM MQ-25 air vehicles for the U.S. Navy.
  T1 received its experimental airworthiness certificate from the FAA in September, verifying that the air vehicle meets the agency’s requirements for safe flight.
  For more information, visit the MQ-25 page
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• 3) Iran's attacks and threat of 'all-out war'mean regime change is still the best U.S. policy
  
  
  Despite the travails of Iraq and Afghanistan, hostility to regime change is historically odd since it negates the greatest recent U.S. foreign policy feat.
  
  
  By Reuel Marc Gerecht
  In the lead-up to the opening of the U.N. General Assembly next week, President Donald Trump has been almost begging the Iranian regime to sit down and start negotiating a new nuclear deal. Instead, Iran apparently decided to launch drones and possibly cruise missiles against Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities. In other words, what Trump wants is not going to happen.
  Since then, the regime in Tehran has only ratcheted up the rhetoric, promising “all-out war” if America dares to retaliate. However, if Trump doesn’t respond militarily with some conviction — after failing to do so after U.S. officials blamed the Iranians in the downing of a U.S. drone and for ship attacks in the Gulf this summer— the White House will be giving the ruling clerics a green light for even more brazen actions.
  Whether the president wants it or not, he’s now in the defining duel of his presidency with the most accomplished Middle Eastern dictator since World War II, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. What the president ought to do, and probably won’t, is realize that he can’t deal his way out of this confrontation, that he must militarily check the Islamic Republic in the Gulf, and opt for the true solution to our Iranian theocratic problem: the clerical regime’s dissolution.
  On the left and right, the phrase “regime change” often provokes aspersions against “neocons,” “hawks” and “liberal interventionists” who are prepared to use American power against aggressive tyrants. Despite the travails of Iraq and Afghanistan, this hostility is historically odd for an American since it traduces the greatest accomplishment of post-World War II U.S. foreign policy — the collapse of the Soviet Union.
  Regime change neither mandates U.S. invasions nor even a particularly muscular support of those who want to free themselves from oppression. Any containment strategy against a revolutionary, expansionist enemy is a policy of regime change.
  Countering such an enemy does oblige the United States to risk conflict, though, and respond militarily if redlines are crossed — as they have been by Iran in recent days — just as Washington continuously did throughout the Cold War with the USSR, Communist China and their allies.
  Advocating such a foreign policy denotes inextricable moral and strategic choices: that an enemy is sufficiently malevolent and convulsive that it should be checked. Until President Barack Obama, Democrats and Republicans, more or less, had considerable common ground concerning the Islamic Republic.
  To wit: that the regime was a virulently anti-American and anti-Semitic revolutionary state, seeking wherever possible to create and back Islamic forces in its own image, with a repugnant proclivity for using terrorism as statecraft and soulcraft (as is apparent in a number of Iranian VIP autobiographies, use of this tactic makes the Iranian elite feel good). Ergo: that it was not in America’s interest to see Iran’s influence spread; its mullahs and its Revolutionary Guards Corps, which has overseen the nuclear weapons program from its inception, should not have the bomb.
  Fleeing from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, seeing America as a clumsy, even baleful, Goliath, and supremely confident in his own abilities, Obama reached out to Iran as soon as he was elected. With the election of Hassan Rouhani as president of Iran in 2013— an architect of the Islamic Republic’s police state who believed that it was worthwhile to trade a temporary respite from Iran’s nuclear ambitions for tens of billions in hard currency, foreign trade and investment — Obama started depicting the Islamic Republic in a more hopeful light.
  His administration rarely expressed criticism of Iranian complicity in the vast slaughter in Syria, which by 2015 Tehran was leading on the ground with its own forces and allied Shiite militias. Understandably. We were negotiating a nuclear deal with a mass murder who was sure to use the hard currency released by Washington to fund sectarian bloodshed and imperialism.
  Obama’s dream of an atomic accord — secret diplomacy commenced in 2012— had led him to make ever-greater nuclear concessions. Obama’s desire to escape the Middle East, and appease the Islamic Republic, married well with Khamenei’s and Rouhani’s determination to use the nuclear program to make the West pay. (In a less politically correct age, we called that blackmail.)
  But Obama still wanted to see regime change in the Islamic Republic. There is no reason to doubt his expressed wish to see Muslims in the Middle East live freely. He just wanted to believe that diplomatic engagement and commerce were the vehicles for transforming the theocracy into something more palatable.
  For the ruling Iranian elite, however, the opposite was surely true: The more the United States reached out to Khamenei and his men, the more they loathed America, which is always trying to use its culture and soft power to undermine Islam and the revolution. The supreme leader’s constant fulminations against the United States may well have intensified after the initial deal was struck. So, too, internal oppression.
  We are in an ironic situation: After 40 years, the United States is finally on the cusp of a somewhat serious regime-change policy (via its sanctions, which are now at least crippling), brought to us by a president who doesn’t believe in regime change. What President Ronald Reagan was after with the Soviet Union and the entire West with apartheid South Africa seems too ethically ambitious for a man who ran against American hegemony in 2016.
  It’s a pity. The Islamic Republic appears in much worse shape than the Soviet Union was when famed political scientist George Kennan published his “X” article in 1947 spelling out what America’s strategy should be, or when Reagan pithily defined his own grand strategy in 1977 (“We win; they lose”).
  The big tensions in Iran are getting worse: between theocracy and democracy, Islamism and nationalism, rich and poor, ever-more independent women and their male overlords, and the aspiring and seriously underemployed college-educated, who now number in the millions, and the ruling clergy’s cronies with easy access to regime-dispensed jobs.
  What was perhaps most striking about provincial protests that broke out in 2017-18 was the lack of anti-American animus — given Washington’s withdrawal from the nuclear agreement and the re-imposition of punishing unilateral U.S. sanctions at that time.
  Despite decades of unrelenting propaganda against “the Great Satan,” despite U.S. sanctions and even military clashes, the Iranian people have become much less anti-American. The massive pro-democracy Green Movement protests in 2009, which took the regime to “edge of the abyss” according to Khamenei, were positively pro-American: Protestors regularly appealed directly to Obama for support. (He didn’t give it.)
  Washington may eventually deploy a serious containment policy against Tehran. Trump may realize that Khamenei isn’t going to relent, that the “good” nuclear deal he says he wants — something that does more than temporarily restrain the regime’s nuclear weapons quest — isn’t possible with Tehran.
  If the president finally goes after Iran’s internal contradictions, as he should, he will have put himself, whether he knows it or not, in the mainstream of post-World War II American history, even if the isolationist right and most of the Democratic Party objects most strenuously.
  Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former Iranian-targets officer in the Central Intelligence Agency, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. 
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  A note on Israel's elections

  The US media coverage of the Israeli election has misrepresented the results of Tuesday’s vote. This isn’t necessarily deliberate. Israeli elections are inscrutable for most foreigners, particularly for Americans who are used to the clarity of the presidential system and two-party system. Here are a few of basic facts about how the vote has gone, and where Israel is likely to go in the days and weeks ahead. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not lose and his challenger, former IDF chief of general staff and Blue and White faction chief Benny Gantz did not win. Despite the fact that Blue and White won 31 seats in the 120-seat Knesset to Likud’s 31 seats, Gantz cannot form a government under any circumstances. He cannot build a majority coalition. Wednesday Netanyahu assembled the heads of all the right wing and religious parties that form the basis for Likud-led governing coalitions. The factions unified into one right-wing bloc and agreed on principles for future coalition talks. They agreed to conduct coalition talks as a bloc, under Netanyahu’s leadership. By forming this 55-member bloc, Netanyahu created a situation where he is the only possible prime minister. Either the Blue and White Party — or one of its three factions — joins him, or Amir Peretz and Orly Levy bring the Labor party in, or Israel goes to new elections. Those are the only options. Continue reading...

  The strategic cost of Israel's political instability

  When Israel Beitenu party chairman Avigdor Liberman abruptly resigned his position as Defense Minister last November and started the countdown to the Knesset elections in April, he plunged Israel into a state of political instability. Following the April elections, by refusing to serve in a government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and so forcing Israel into a second election, Liberman prolonged the instability he instigated. Tuesday’s elections ended in deadlock. Neither major party can form a governing majority. And so, there is no end in sight for the instability Liberman provoked and prolonged. Israel’s prolonged political volatility and uncertainty has had a disastrous impact on Israel’s strategic flexibility. Indeed, it has induced strategic paralysis. Israel cannot respond in a meaningful way to threats or take advantage of strategic opportunities that present themselves. The implications of this dire state of affairs were brought to bear twice in one day during the campaign. In a press conference last Tuesday, Netanyahu announced his intention to apply Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan Valley after the elections. Netanyahu’s announcement included the revelation that President Donald Trump supports the move. U.S. officials backed his claim after the fact. This was a stunning development. No U.S. administration has ever supported Israel’s right to assert its sovereign rights in Judea and Samaria without Palestinian permission until now. But the media and Netanyahu’s political opponents on the left and right ignored this basic fact and instead derided his statement as nothing more than a cheap election stunt to rally his base. In a way, they were right. After all, all Netanyahu did was make a promise. But it was due to Israel’s strategic paralysis that he had no other option. Liberman’s resignation precipitated the Knesset’s dissolution in January with called for April. Trump had planned to release his peace plan late last year. The elections compelled him to delay its release. Liberman’s refusal to join Netanyahu’s coalition in May forced Trump to again delay release of his plan. So long as Trump hasn’t released his plan, Netanyahu has been constrained to announce any position on the permanent disposition of Judea and Samaria. Under the circumstances, declaring his intention to apply Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley with American support was the best he could do. Anything more would have harmed Trump’s rollout. And Trump won’t present his plan so long as there is no government. Tuesday evening, Netanyahu was delivering a speech in Ashdod when the Islamic Jihad in Gaza shot a missile towards the city. Netanyahu’s bodyguards quickly compelled him to leave the stage and seek shelter. Islamic Jihad is an Iranian proxy. It does nothing without Iranian permission and often direction. So to all practical purposes, the missile strike on Ashdod was an Iranian strike. It was launced to advance Iran’s strategic goal of fomenting Netanyahu’s removal from office. Blue and White party leaders Benny Gantz and Gabi Ashkenazy were happy to swallow Iran’s bait. They insinuated that Netanyahu was a coward for leaving the stage in the midst of the attack. The public, which has grown tired of running for shelter from rockets and missiles, similarly voted, or chose not to vote, just as Iran had hoped. Presumably recognizing the strategic significance of the attack, according to media reports, Netanyahu wished to respond with a strategic strike against Hamas and the Islamic Jihad in Gaza. But so long as Israel is in a state of strategic paralysis, there’s no point in going to war. There is no way to set, let along achieve military goals that can advance Israel’s strategic interests for the long haul. As bad as things are in Gaza, the regional situation is many times worse, as last Saturday’s Iranian attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil processing plant at Abqaiq and its oil field at Khurais demonstrated. The evidence U.S. and Saudi investigators have found at the sites prove Iran was behind the attacks which it carried out with drones and cruise missiles. U.S. officials announced Thursday that they originated in a Revolutionary Guards base in Ahvaz in southern Iran. But while U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other senior U.S. officials have openly admitted that this was an Iranian strike, Trump himself has waited to make a definitive statement about the attack and its implications for the U.S. Trump’s reticence is a product of political constraints. Ahead of next year’s presidential race, Trump needs to secure his political base. A large portion of his voters are sick and tired of the Middle East and its wars. A direct U.S. military confrontation with Iran in retaliation for last Saturday’s attack would anger those voters. Trump’s reelection bid would be threatened. Before entering a military confrontation with Iran, Trump needs to deliver three things to his voters. First, he needs to be able to provide absolute proof that Iran is responsible for the attack on the Abqaiq and Khurais oil installations and that the attacks did in fact originate from Iranian territory. U.S. investigators are assembling that proof. Second, Trump needs to be able to make the case that the attack on the Saudi installations directly harmed vital U.S. interests. This case is not difficult to make. The Iranian temporarily took out 5 percent of global oil output. Since the end of World War II, protecting the free flow of oil from the Persian Gulf to global markets has been a foundation of U.S. Middle East policy. The third thing Trump must do to preserve his political base is ensure that the lion’s share of the burden – military and economic — of retaliation is borne by U.S. allies, not by the U.S. Trump’s supporters firmly believe that since it was Saudi territory that was targeted, the Saudis need to bear the brunt of the burden. Trump stated outright that the Saudis will be footing the bill during a press opportunity on Tuesday. While Trump is constrained by his base, his Democratic and European opponents are blaming the Iranian strike on Trump. Everyone from French President Emmanuel Macron to German Chancellor Angela Merkel to former Obama White House officials insist if Trump hadn’t abandoned his predecessor Barack Obama’s nuclear deal that gave Iran $150 billion and an open road to a nuclear arsenal by 2025, the Iranians would never have gone to war against Saudi Arabia. If Tump goes back to the deal, and gives Iran a $15 billion credit line, they promise, Iran will put down its guns. Although Trump refuses to close the door on the possibility of sitting down and making a deal with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, it is clear that he has no intention of abandoning his “maximum pressure” strategy and embracing Obama’s “maximum appeasement” strategy towards Iran. It is also clear that in Trump’s view, his options are limited. He expects U.S. allies to carry most of the load. Which brings us back to Israel’s strategic paralysis. It was in response to Obama’s bid to realign the U.S. away from its traditional allies Israel and the Sunni Arab states and towards Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood that that Netanyahu first reached out to the Sunni Arab regimes. His efforts quickly bore fruit. Led by Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the Sunnis began working intensively with Israel to minimize the strategic damage of Obama’s policies. Netanyahu’s outreach was successful and as a consequence Israel, long isolated from its region, emerged as a regional power accepted and respected by its Sunni partners. It was Israel’s newfound strategic posture that propelled the Trump administration to embrace Israel as a full partner in its maximum pressure campaign against Iran. For the past year, Israel and the U.S. have had a division of labor. The Trump administration has waged economic war against Iran with sanctions and Israel has served as the military component of the campaign by striking Iranian assets and installations in Iraq and Syria. Now, when it is clear that the U.S. is both constrained from conducting a major operation due to Trump’s electoral concerns, and fully cognizant of the need to retaliate militarily against Iran in a serious way, the price of Israel’s strategic paralysis has become prohibitive. The Iranian strike on Saudi Arabia’s oil installations is an opportunity to carry out a strategic assault on Iran. Such an assault could target Iran’s nuclear installations, Revolutionary Guards bases and other regime targets. The goal of such a campaign would be to significantly set back Iran’s nuclear weapons program and undermine regime stability. Today is an opportune moment for Israel to conduct such an attack, in cooperation with Saudi Arabia. U.S. support a retaliatory strike would increase the probability of success significantly. Were Israel to conduct such an operation, it would safeguard its regional position and deterrent power for a generation. It would do so at Iran’s expense and so vastly diminish the strategic threats it faces. On the other hand, if due to its strategic paralysis, Israel fails to take advantage of this opportunity, the strategic balance of power in the Middle East will shift in Iran’s favor. Iran will be empowered by the U.S.’s weak response, Saudi fecklessness and Israeli inaction. Israel’s credibility and position in the region built through Netanyahu’s effective cooperation with the Americans and the Sunnis — will be destroyed as the Americans and the Sunnis cease viewing Israel as a dependable partner. Inside the U.S., Trump will take a political hit. Following Obama’s pro-Iranian administration, Trump has made restoring the U.S. alliance with Israel and the Sunnis the centerpiece of his Middle East policy. Israeli inaction combined with Saudi incompetence will be used by Trump’s political opponents and the isolationist wing of his support base to condemn his key policy as a failure. Obama’s nuclear deal, and his maximum appeasement strategy will get a new lease on life. The major failing of the Israeli media, and most Israeli politicians is their chronic inability to understand how outsiders – in the region and throughout the world – perceive Israel. They don’t consider, let along understand the ramifications of those perceptions on Israel’s national security. Consequently, they don’t understand that Israel’s prolonged political instability imperils our most critical strategic interests and squanders our greatest strategic opportunities. Originally published in Israel Hayom.

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