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I do not like you Biden,
I do not like your hiding
I cannot stomach your manners
I do not like your stammers
You have no natural wit
You absolutely lack true grit
I think you are a wimp
Your personality is so limp
I will be glad when you retire
It is Dr. Seuss I most admire
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Another Biden idea that will flop?
Why a Return to the
JCPOA Will Be Even Harder Than Many Think
The administration of
U.S. President Joe Biden will find that Iran is not the only constraint on its
options as it seeks a negotiated return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action, or JCPOA. The administration will also find its hands tied by a nearly
forgotten law enacted by the U.S. Congress in 2015: the Iran Nuclear Agreement
Review Act, or INARA.
Designed by a Republican
Congress to permit oversight of what had been a secretive negotiating process,
INARA granted Congress the opportunity to review, and potentially disapprove
of, former President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. While INARA didn’t
stop the deal, it remains the law of the land. The Act mandates congressional
review — and provides for potential disapproval — of not just the JCPOA, but
any “agreement related to the nuclear program of Iran … regardless of the form
it takes.” Further, the Act prohibits the extension of sanctions relief during
the 30-day period the law sets aside for congressional review of any nuclear
agreement with Iran.
Thus, the Biden
administration will face two obstacles as it seeks to revive the JCPOA. The
first has been widely noted: Iran is violating the agreement, and bringing
Tehran back into compliance will not be easy. The second obstacle, rarely
mentioned, will be INARA.
To be once again
compliant with the JCPOA, Iran will need to dispose of the excess enriched
uranium it has produced, which is now more than ten times the amount permitted.
The same is true for uranium that has been enriched to higher levels than
allowed. Ditto for prohibited centrifuge cascades and the advanced centrifuges
it has installed. Harder still, Tehran must provide better responses to
verification concerns than the ones the International Atomic Energy Agency
recently pronounced “unsatisfactory” and “not technically credible.” Resolving
all these issues will take months.
Further, it is not clear
that Iran is willing to return to full compliance. Its stated demands are not
just that Biden lift all economic sanctions imposed on Iran during the Trump
administration, but also that the United States provide compensation for the
economic benefits of the deal denied to Iran by Trump’s policies. With Iranian
presidential elections looming in June, it will be hard for the regime to walk
away from this demand. Its only leverage for obtaining compensation will be to
hold out on returning to full compliance.
To its credit, the Biden
administration has recognized that with so much uncertainty, it would be
foolhardy to simply lift all of former President Donald Trump’s sanctions and
hope that Iran will immediately return to full compliance. Instead, the
administration appears intent on negotiating a set of reciprocal measures with
Tehran under which sanctions will be eased as Iran comes into compliance. But
this is precisely where INARA restricts Biden’s options.
If the Biden
administration agrees with Iran on a pathway for returning to the nuclear deal,
INARA will require that agreement to be submitted for congressional review,
with the prospect of votes in both congressional chambers on whether to reject
the agreement. Unless the administration is prepared to defy the statute, its
only alternative for avoiding congressional review of its policy will be to
unilaterally lift sanctions and trust Iran to reciprocate by coming back into
full compliance itself.
Even if the Biden
administration manages to finesse this aspect of the law, it will not be free
of INARA. The Act further requires the president to submit a compliance
certification to Congress every 90 days confirming that, among other things,
“Iran is transparently, verifiably, and fully implementing the agreement.”
Trump stopped submitting these certifications when he withdrew from the
agreement, but if Biden rejoins the Iran deal, INARA will require him to resume
submitting them.
Given how hard it will
be for Iran to return to full compliance, it’s not clear how Biden will be able
to make this certification initially, even if Iran tries diligently to comply.
And if Tehran doesn’t try to fully comply, Biden certainly won’t be able to
make the certification.
Absent a certification
by the end of any one of the 90-day periods, INARA will provide congressional
Republicans the option to force a vote—in both the Senate and House—on
legislation mandating the reimposition of U.S. sanctions on Iran. These votes
would take place under so-called expedited procedures, which ensure floor votes
even over the objections of the majority leadership of either chamber.
Some in Congress are
sure to call for reimposition of U.S. sanctions if Biden’s policy does not
produce obvious results, and INARA will give them a mechanism to force the
issue to a vote.
When Obama presented his
nuclear deal to Congress under INARA in 2015, it was opposed by all
Republicans, 25 House Democrats, and four Senate Democrats. Given the narrow
margins in the newly elected Congress, Biden will need to command stronger
support than that to prevent Congress from passing legislation to upend his
Iran policy.
For all these reasons,
the Biden administration will likely find it challenging indeed to develop a
post-Trump strategy toward Iran that can pass muster with both Tehran and the
U.S. Congress.
Stephen Rademaker is
senior of counsel at Covington & Burling and a former assistant secretary
of state. The views expressed are the author's own.
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Hypocrisy is alive and well and replacing judicial "equality" with the word "equity" is another attempt to weaponize politics through words.
Why do Jewish groups
no longer care about ‘kids in cages’?
Liberals advocate for immigration policies that are creating a
humanitarian disaster, yet show their partisanship by not protesting measures
they denounced when Trump was in office.
If there was one cause that united all
critics of former President Donald Trump during the past four years, it was
their horror and outrage about “kids in cages.” In the view of most liberal
groups, the detention of minor illegal immigrants in temporary facilities near
the southern border was an intolerable human-rights offense. They saw it as
proof of the depravity of Trump’s administration and its determination to halt
the flow of illegal immigrants.
Among the loudest
voices denouncing the president were those of the organized Jewish community.
Led by the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism, HIAS—the immigrant aid
group that once devoted itself to Jewish immigrants but now serves an almost
entirely non-Jewish client base—the Anti-Defamation League and a host of other
mainstream groups, the anger about the spectacle of children being detained in
this fashion was seemingly universal. The fervor with which liberal Jewish
groups railed at the idea that both those children who had entered the country
illegally on their own—as well as those who were, for a time, separated from
families or other adults who came with them—were being kept in makeshift
prisons was intense.
But as a new surge of
illegals has started to pour over the border in anticipation of what they hope
will be an end to enforcement of laws against illegal immigration, those who
were screaming about the injustice of “kids in cages” must answer an important
question. If the detention of minors in makeshift prisons was a crime under
Trump, why are they indifferent to it when it is happening now under President
Joe Biden?
These Jewish groups
are supportive of Biden’s proposal—the U.S.
Citizenship Act of 2021—for a massive overhaul of the immigration
system that will involve wholesale amnesty for all illegal immigrants already
in the country and the loosening of restrictions on those who seek asylum in
the United States. The Democratic bill is notable not just for its offer of
amnesty but because, unlike previous such legislation, Biden’s proposal has no
provisions for strengthening border security so as to prevent future waves of
illegals.
In a series of executive
orders issued earlier
this month, Biden has revived the infamous “catch and release” practice in
which those caught at the border are allowed to stay in the country, where they
will await court proceedings that most ignore. He’s also ended Trump’s
policy of forcing those seeking asylum from Central American countries to stay
on the other side of the border awaiting hearings. These people, whose claims
are largely legally unsustainable, are now simply being allowed into the
country, where they will add to the growing total of illegals (usually
estimated at approximately 11 million people but, as a 2018 Yale
University study noted, could be as much as twice that due to
successful efforts at evading detection) who will be eligible for amnesty under
Democratic plans.
Biden has also issued
a number of new
regulations that will drastically limit the ability of
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to track down those illegals who have
gone through the legal process and are eligible for deportation. The new rules
will prevent those guilty of all but the most grievous of crimes from being
arrested.
Sympathy for migrants
comes naturally to a Jewish community for whom the immigrant experience is
baked deep into their historical memory. A faith that enjoins its adherents to
honor strangers because they were themselves once strangers can be easily
mobilized to regard those who are crossing the border as somehow analogous to
Jews who fled Nazi-controlled Europe and were turned away by nativist-inspired
restrictions in the 1930s.
That the situation of
citizens of Central American nations who wish to enter the United States
without permission is, however dire, not remotely similar to that of Jews who
were all fleeing a sentence of certain death did not deter liberal Jewish
groups from employing bogus Holocaust analogies when attacking Trump.
Their ideological
devotion to the principle of support for immigrants’ rights even to the point
of advocating for policies that are tantamount to a declaration of an open
border overrides any other consideration. That includes the notion of allowing
in a massive number of people in search of jobs and willing to work for low
wages at a time when there is already crippling employment in the United States,
especially for minority populations. That this is also happening while we’re
still in the middle of a pandemic is also counter-intuitive.
Nor are these Jewish
champions of illegal immigrants sensible of the fact that by encouraging the
populations of Central American nations to believe that soon the gates of the
United States will swing open for them, they are setting off a rush at the
border that is already starting to become a humanitarian disaster. Newspapers
like The New York Times have been reporting about this growing
crisis since December when the impact of Biden’s election and
the prospect of the end of a tough enforcement policy became manifest.
What’s even more
ironic is that while the administration has sought to persuade those
planning on entering the United States that “now is not the time to come,” the
flow of children over the border has started to resemble the numbers coming in
before Trump put his much-despised measures in place and drastically reduced
illegal immigration.
That means that
thousands of illegal immigrant children have been detained in recent weeks in
what even the Times referred to
as a “resumption of Trump-era policies.” What’s more, these children are now
being kept in some of the same facilities that were denounced as a nightmare by
immigrant advocates.
Yet all we’re hearing
from some of the same groups that didn’t shy away from calling Trump a Nazi for
putting “kids in cages” is crickets when Biden does the same thing. As an article in The Forward noted, those who Jews shamelessly
virtue-signaled about the plight of children in detention centers are singing a
very different tune these days.
Motivated by their
sympathy for an administration that shares their open-borders sentiments,
they’ve chosen to keep quiet about Biden treating children no differently than
Trump and to let Biden spokespersons get away with the kind of rhetorical
mendacity they wouldn’t have tolerated from a Republican.
What can we learn from
this?
Such
liberal Jewish groups are shameless partisan hypocrites who are, in practice,
more interested in providing cover for a Democrat than in actually helping the
children for whom they’ve been weeping crocodile tears when they were
supposedly Trump’s victims. Their willingness to give Biden a pass for putting
“kids in cages” is the sort of brazen deceit that makes even run-of-the-mill
hypocrites look sincere.
Just as important, by
failing to understand the consequences of their amnesty advocacy and helping to
set off another surge at the border, they are doing incalculable harm to the
people they claim to wish to help. Encouraging the shadowy forces that
facilitate illegal immigration to redouble their efforts is setting in motion a
series of events that is already leading to more deaths at the border and a
crisis in areas on the American side of the border where communities are being
overwhelmed by the flow of migrants.
It
isn’t too much to ask that those who regard immigrant rights to be a Jewish
issue to at least be consistent with respect to their condemnations and stop
acting like shills for the Democratic Party. Nor is it unreasonable to expect
them to stop acting as if the plight of these migrants isn’t in some way
related to advocacy that is essentially urging them to not only violate U.S.
laws, but to also put their lives and that of their children at risk.
And:
‘Equity’ Is a Mandate to
Discriminate
The new buzzword tries to hide the aim of
throwing out the American principle of equality under the law.
By Charles Lipson
On his first day as president, Joe Biden issued an “Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities.” Mr. Biden’s cabinet nominees must now explain whether this commitment to “equity” means they intend to abolish “equal treatment under law.” Their answers are a confused mess.
Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton
raised the question explicitly in confirmation hearings. Attorney
General-designate Merrick Garland responded: “I think discrimination is morally
wrong. Absolutely.” Marcia Fudge, slated to run Housing and Urban Development,
gave a much different answer. “Just to be clear,” Mr. Cotton asked, “it sounds
like racial equity means treating people differently based on their race. Is
that correct?”
Ms. Fudge’s responded:
“Not based on race, but it could be based on economics, it could be based on
the history of discrimination that has existed for a long time.” Ms. Fudge’s
candid response tracks that of Kamala Harris’s tweet and video, posted before
the election and viewed 6.4 million times: “There’s a big difference between
equality and equity.”
Ms. Harris and Ms. Fudge
are right. There is a big difference. It’s the difference between equal
treatment and equal outcomes. Equality means equal treatment, unbiased
competition and impartially judged outcomes. Equity means equal outcomes,
achieved if necessary by unequal treatment, biased competition and preferential
judging.
Those who push for
equity have hidden these crucial differences for a reason. They aren’t merely
unpopular; they challenge America’s bedrock principle that people should be
treated equally and judged as individuals, not as members of groups.
The demand for equal
outcomes contradicts a millennium of Anglo-Saxon law and political evolution.
It undermines the Enlightenment principle of equal treatment for individuals of
different social rank and religion. America’s Founders drew on those roots when
they declared independence, saying it was “self-evident” that “all men are
created equal.”
That heritage, along
with the lack of a hereditary aristocracy, is why claims for equal treatment
are so deeply rooted in U.S. history. It is why radical claims for unequal
treatment must be carefully buried in word salads praising equity and social
justice.
Hidden, too, are the
extensive measures that would be needed to achieve equal outcomes. Only a
powerful central government could impose the intensive—and expensive—programs
of social intervention, ideological re-education and economic redistribution.
Only an intrusive bureaucracy could specify the rules for every business,
public institution and civic organization. Those unhappy implications are why
advocates of equity are so determined to hide what the term really means.
Americans have demanded
that all levels of government stop giving special treatment to the rich and
powerful. That is simply a demand for equality. Likewise, they recognize that
equal treatment should begin early, such as with adequate funding for K-12
students.
Since the New Deal, most
Americans have supported some form of social safety net for the poor and
disadvantaged. But this safety net doesn’t demand that out-of-work coal miners
receive the same income as those who are working. The debate has always been
about how extensive the safety net should be and how long it should last for
each recipient. There is broad agreement that no worker should be laid off
because of his race, gender or religion. Again, that is a demand for equal
treatment.
What we are seeing now
is different. It is the claim that the unfair treatment of previous generations
or perhaps a disadvantaged childhood entitles one to special consideration
today as an adult or young adult. Most Americans, who are both generous and
pragmatic, have been willing to extend some of these benefits, at the margins
and for limited periods. They don’t want to turn these concessions into large,
permanent entitlement programs, giving substantially different treatment to
different groups, even if those groups have suffered historical wrongs.
One measure of how
unpopular these unequal programs are is how often their proponents need to
rename them. “Quotas” were restyled as “affirmative action.” The goal was still
to give special benefits to some groups to achieve desired outcomes. Now
“affirmative action” has also become toxic, rejected most recently by voters in
deep-blue California. Hence, the new name, “equity.”
Instead of making their
case openly and honestly, advocates of equity twist and turn to avoid revealing
their radical goal of re-engineering society through coercion. If the results
fall short, as they inevitably would, the remedy is obvious: more money, more
rules and more indoctrination. Why not tell us who will receive these special
benefits and for how long? At whose expense? Who will administer these
programs? Who will judge whether the outcomes are fair enough? When will it all
end?
Since the ultimate goal
is achieving equal outcomes, these evasions raise the hardest question of all.
Isn’t equity just a new brand name for the oldest program of achieving equal
outcomes? Its name is socialism.
Mr. Lipson is a
professor emeritus of political science at the University of Chicago, where he
founded the Program on International Politics, Economics, and Security.
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Petri rejects what liberals are "dishing" out when it comes to his faith:
Crispy cod & a sense of belonging—long lines at Fish Fries a sign of how much we long for community
“Our lifeline to connectivity with each other has been severed. Our children are not in schools, nor are they participating in sports. Some grandparents and grandchildren have gone over a year of missing that great generational connection that soothes and educates both age groups. The fabric of our society, already frayed by two decades of an internet-connected world, is shredding further and faster.
“There's some camaraderie to fish fries, and, believe it or not, there's a camaraderie to going to a fish fry with people you've never met," explains Ken Petri, a 56-year-old military veteran. "Everybody seems to be on the same page in regards to what it's about, but everybody's happy. It's a wonderful thing.”
Despite his two hour wait in his car last week Petri is heading out once again today, like others in western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin,
A quick Google news search shows Petri is not alone in his aspirational pursuit.
Like him, they are undeterred and prepared to tilt at that same windmill we are all looking to conquer, which is being us again, being all part of something bigger than ourselves.”
Click here for the full story.
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Semper Fi!
A retired Marine Corps General is now in Congress and is fed up with what is happening to the nation he served (edited):
Richard: Our heroes didn’t die for this. A great sickness has overtaken our country – and it has now reached the halls of Congress. The radical left movement now in control of Congress does not support our founding, the principles of our Constitution, our extraordinary individual freedoms, and the signal achievements of the American people over 240 years—they hate it all. The Democrats are not the party of J.F.K. anymore. They are the party of ANTIFA, BLM, AOC and socialism. Instead of finalizing a timely relief bill for Americans who have suffered as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, these radicals, who control a slim majority in Congress, have used their power to railroad the American people with a flurry of legislation that:
If you support those actions, then you can stop reading, but if you’re ready to join me in this new fight for freedom, then please donate ... TODAY! Our Founding Fathers didn’t declare America’s Independence so that socialists in Congress could enslave a free people into Marxist tyranny – just like our brave troops didn’t take Normandy and Iwo Jima so that radical leftists could “deconstruct” America, call George Washington “racist”, and brainwash our children with their Marxist doctrine. I’m fighting day and night for our American values in Congress like I did when I served in the Marine Corps. I love our country, and I know you love America, too. That’s why I’m writing to you directly: I need your support if we are going to win this fight for freedom. As a retired Marine Lt. General (oorah) and the highest-ranking combat Veteran in Congress, I am committed to defending America at home, just as I did overseas. Our men and women who have died fighting for our country DID NOT make the ultimate sacrifice so that the radical left could fundamentally transform America into an unrecognizable nation governed by socialists. American patriots in Iraq and Afghanistan didn’t lose their legs, limbs, or life so that the very things they fought for – their children’s future, our country, and the Constitution – could be attacked and destroyed from within by Marxist revolutionaries in our hometowns. America is beautiful, not evil. We must stand up for the founding principles that have served as the wellspring of American exceptionalism for over 240 years. America is great because we are free, we are free because we are brave, we are brave because we are strong, and we are strong because of our sacred American values that we must protect. We are about to lose this fight for freedom, and we can’t afford to have you stay on the sidelines. Will you join me in the fight for OUR American values and against the tide of socialism that has invaded the Democrat Party? May God bless the United States of America,
P.S. I must admit that I’m being selfish with my request for your assistance. I have ten grandchildren and I want them to grow up in a free nation alongside your children and grandchildren, where they will all enjoy the American Dream. If you support my motivation for securing the American Dream for the next generation, then help me by donating ... ! | |
| |
Rep. Jack Bergman is a retired member of the United States Marine Corps. The use of his military rank, job titles, and photographs in uniform does not imply endorsement by the Department of the Navy, the Marine Corps, or the Department of Defense. |
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It is possible the recent move by the Dow of some 700 points in one day and ending the day up some 600 points could turn out to have been a "blow off." We will only find out some months from now if interest rates and inflation continue to turn upward.
For the next few moths I am willing to wait and see the benefit to the economy as more vaccinations occur and stupid politicians become frightened and allow the economy to re-open.
These same stupid politicians, who drink the "Green Kool Aid," thought the hot air emanating from their throats would keep Texas warm but it did not. Ross is absolutely right when he writes nuclear and natural gas must remain the base energy source and the rest of the various substitutes can only be supplemental. Good thing Greta lives elsewhere or she might have experienced busted water pipes unless she has become pregnant by reason of her inane programmed ideas.
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