He should swallow hard, avoid choking on his "uge" ego and act dignified. Petulance, at 70 plus, is not a badge of honor. Trump could then become far more endearing and project a more effective image against "Doofuses' " continued imbecilities.
I fear Trump relishes self-destruction.
As for myself I would love to see De Santis with Pompeo, Kristi Noem or Niki Haley
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A valid question:
“There are many, many officers and commanders in reserve who are very worried about Israel’s national security for the long term, for generations to come. We ask a very basic question, which for some reason has not been asked at all: What is needed to secure Israel and to make sure that it will prosper for generations to come? ...For a nation that has been expelled from its land twice, and has spent 2,000 years in the diaspora, it must be a very serious question... This time, [we are] here to stay for eternity. ”
—IDF Brig. Gen. Amir Avivi in EMET's webinar
And:
Saudi-Iranian Negotiations Will Not Lead to Regional Rapprochement
By Hussein Aboubakr Mansour | November 19, 2021
As a new wave of unrest in Lebanon, Iraq and Sudan signals that the Middle East will keep coming back to knock on the White House’s doors, news about successful rounds of talks between Saudi Arabia and Iran have observers wondering if rapprochement between the two rivals is possible. Despite the positive remarks from both sides, the recent Gulf lash back against Lebanon indicates the confrontation is deepening. This means the Saudi Iranian negotiations are not about trying to deescalate tensions in the Persian Gulf and on Saudi southern borders.
After concluding several rounds of talks, both between Saudi Arabia and Iran expressed their satisfaction and anticipation of more dialogue. The exchange of diplomatic pleasantries and public optimism should not obfuscate the growing undercurrents of tensions in the region coupled with the current uncertainty around the negotiations of the JCPOA 2.0 in Vienna and the talk of US officials about alternative plans.
Read the full article here.
Finally:
Tragic that all democracies have to spend money on military preparedness when there are other needs but the evil will always walk amongst us:
IDF to invest NIS 1 billion as it prepares for war in Lebanon, Syria
Israel's defense establishment is monitoring the situation of Syrian president Bashar Assad's regime, which is in the process of gaining legitimacy.
The IDF is set to invest NIS 1 billion in combat training drills and exercises for reserves units in 2022, as it began preparations this month toward an operation against Hezbollah and pro-Iranian terrorist militias based in Lebanon and Syria.
According to foreign reports, Israel has stepped up its military involvement in Syria. Syrian reports consistently attribute airstrikes over the country to Israel, with the latest coming on Monday when the IDF allegedly struck an empty building in Damascus.
The latest strike came a little over a week after two Syrian soldiers were injured and material damage was caused by an alleged Israeli airstrike targeting sites along the coast of Syria and in the center of the country.
The latest attacks in Syria targeted pro-Iranian militias and IRGC infrastructure scattered across the country, as well as Midhat al-Saleh, a Syrian man who spent time in prison for terrorist activities and was killed by an Israeli sniper in October, according to foreign reports.
Al-Saleh was involved in the planning of a future terror attack targeting Israel, according to Israeli sources.
146th Division reserve forces take part in an exercise as part of Northern Command's war preparedness drills in November 2021. (Video credit: IDF Spokesperson's Unit)
Israel’s defense establishment is monitoring the situation of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime, which is in the process of gaining legitimacy, Israeli sources said.
The process – which includes foreign embassies being opened in Syria, talks with Jordan and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Assad being given Russian backing, and the evacuation of a senior IRGC officer from the country in coordination with Iran – is not a sudden change in strategy but a slow, methodical approach to legitimizing Assad and his regime, Israel’s defense establishment assessed.
Israel has also reportedly noticed a change in strategy within Hezbollah in its approach to international relations and diplomacy.
36th Division forces take part in an exercise as part of Northern Command's war preparedness drills in November 2021. (Video credit: IDF Spokesperson's Unit)
The new approach, which is in contrast to the position of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, calls for a more open relationship with the West, and to ease ideological restrictions on Lebanese people of all religions, including Shi’ia Muslims and Christians in the country.
Nasrallah has yet to publicly comment, as Lebanon is rooted in a deep crisis all across the country, with riots over the investigation of the Beirut port blast in August 2020, the formation of a new government, and a massive energy crisis that includes regular power outages.
On Thursday, the IDF’s Northern Command, led by OC Maj.-Gen. Amir Baram, completed a round of divisional exercises started last month.
The exercises included training in combat scenarios using the deployment of reserve forces in conjunction with regular-service soldiers on the ground, air and sea, and combining the use of simulated drills, cyber intelligence and military drones used for both combat and transporting of cargo.
One of the combat scenarios trained by Northern Command’s reserves units simulated rocket fire coming from the North, and damage being done to the IDF’s technological systems.
The new IDF budget is set to substantially increase the number of divisional exercises, with 20 exercises set for 2022 compared with 13 in 2021 and only three in 2020.
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Will Manchin also cave at the end?
Will Joe Manchin Stand His Ground on Inflation?
Federal spending is its biggest driver. He has demanded an honest accounting, due this week.
By Phil Gramm and Mike Solon
And:
The Real Biden Bill: At Least $4.6 Trillion
Program by program, here’s how Democrats disguise the real cost of their entitlement blowout.
By The Editorial Board
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You have two basic choices: Believe Oren or Biden. That should be a no brainer.
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Biden gives a clinic on how not to negotiate with Iran
The administration is already floating new concessions while the Iranians are flouting international nuclear monitors. Washington has lost the game before it started, and Israel is clearly on its own.
By JONATHAN S. TOBIN
(November 18, 2021 / JNS) It’s hard not to sympathize a bit with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and his coalition partner Foreign Minister Yair Lapid. Despite their best efforts to make nice with the Biden administration, they are quickly catching on to the fact that despite all the happy talk being exchanged between Washington and Jerusalem, the United States is about to leave the Jewish state out on a limb with respect to the greatest threat to its security.
That’s the upshot of an Axios report that states that Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told his Israeli counterpart, Bennett’s National Security Adviser Eyal Hulata, that the United States is re-adjusting its goals for ongoing nuclear talks with Iran, which are scheduled to resume later this month in Vienna. Rather than stick to its position about wanting the Islamist regime to re-enter the already dangerously weak 2015 deal negotiated by the Obama administration, the Americans are already waving the white flag on that point—let alone their supposed long-term objective of getting Iran to agree to a new, stronger agreement that would fix the problems with the original Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
According to the report, which the publication claims was confirmed by both Israeli and American sources, the Biden foreign-policy team is afraid that the situation is getting away from them. What they are now proposing is an interim agreement that will serve as a way to stall for more time rather than actually pressing Tehran to rejoin the old deal or face the consequences. Indeed, consequences—or anything like holding Iran accountable for the way it’s moving inexorably towards its nuclear goal—are not on the table.
The terms of the proposal involve getting Iran to agree to freeze its nuclear enrichment at current levels, estimated to be at the 60-percent level, in exchange for “some frozen Iranian assets” and “waivers on sanctions.”There are two problems with this.
One is that bribing Iran with billions in order to, as former President Barack Obama disingenuously noted at the time, get them to “get right with the world” hasn’t worked. More gifts to the ayatollahs along with reduced sanctions will only reinforce that lesson.
The other is that it grants legitimacy to Iran’s current rogue behavior in pushing ahead with enrichment. The JCPOA was a disaster for Western security, though it did place some limits on Iran’s uranium enrichment activity—up to 3.67 percent. In the last six years, it’s been obvious that Iran was cheating on that, but by legitimizing the 60-percent level, the United States would be rewarding them for violating the accord.
If we’ve learned anything about the way Iran negotiates, we know that Tehran will never agree to get below that figure. The same Axios report noted that Hulata pointed this out to Sullivan, saying there is no such thing as a temporary concession to Iran. Anything they get becomes a permanent asset that they never surrender at the negotiating table. But neither Sullivan, nor anyone else in the Biden administration, seems capable of learning from their mistakes. Nothing can divert them from their blind faith in appeasement, whose only apparent goal seems to be to achieve a rapprochement with Iran at any cost.
This repeats the same pattern of Iran negotiations that led to the original deal, which not only was a financial bonanza for the regime, but allowed it to keep its nuclear program and advanced research along with sunset clauses that would give it a legal path to bomb by the end of this decade. Having entered the original Iran talks in 2013 with all the cards in his hand as a result of tough international sanctions that he had been dragged into by Congress, Obama and then-Secretary of State John Kerry proceeded to react to each “no” from Iran by simply dropping the matter and moving on to some other point that the Iranians would, in turn, also bluff them into conceding.
The craven nature of the administration’s approach can’t be fully appreciated without also taking into account that Tehran’s recent behavior has demonstrated the kind of brazen contempt for Biden that shows just how little they think of American leadership.
As The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week, Iran has resumed production of advanced nuclear centrifuge parts that would only make sense if it was preparing or operating a covert nuclear-weapons program. Moreover, the production is taking place at a plant in Karaj, where inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency have been denied access. Iran had halted production at Karaj in June due to what it called Israeli sabotage. But the new centrifuge parts production has increased since August, showing that whatever damage the Israeli efforts had caused has since been repaired.
Rather than threatening more sanctions or military action should Iran get even closer to its nuclear goal, the best Biden and his gang of Obama administration alumni who are back running things in Washington can do is to float the possibility of more concessions.
Just as bad is another report by Reuters, whose diplomatic sources say the Americans are solely focused on winning over the Russians and the Chinese, who were also parties to the original JCPOA to help persuade the Iranians to behave.
The expectation that the Chinese will help is a fantasy. The Chinese already signaled that they have Iran’s back by concluding a $400 billion economic agreement that gave Iran a market for its oil, as well as investment for improving its crumbling infrastructure. The Russians have also shown that they are more interested in chipping away at American security than in stopping Iran.
A year ago, American sanctions unilaterally imposed by former President Donald Trump after he withdrew the United States from the JCPOA put Iran on the defensive. He forced the Europeans to go along with his play by giving them no leeway for appeasement by making them choose between doing business with Iran or the world’s largest economy. Had that “maximum pressure” policy, which, in fact, still had room to be made much stronger, been continued, Iran could have been brought to its knees unless it agreed to negotiate a nuclear deal with no sunset clauses. That would not only prevent them from getting a bomb but also make them give up their status as the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.
But Biden’s only objective was diplomacy with Iran. That gave the Iranians all the leverage they needed. Nor is Tehran the slightest bit afraid of America punishing it for its provocations or a breakout to a nuclear weapon. And if they had any doubts about Biden’s weakness, his feckless and disastrous retreat from Afghanistan caused them to disappear.
That leaves Bennett and Lapid wondering what to do. Israel’s Saudi allies, who are under constant pressure from Biden for human-rights violations while the administration ignores those of countries not allied to the United States, are in a similar quandary.
It’s not like the former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who failed to stop the original Iran deal, would be doing any better with Biden. The willingness of the current American leadership to give up on stopping Iran even before the nuclear talks restart puts the Israelis in the position of having to choose between standing by and watching Biden compromise their future by appeasing an existential threat to the Jewish state’s existence, and defying their sole superpower ally with their own efforts to stop Iran that are far from assured of success.
Whatever else Biden’s failures so far in office have achieved, the one indisputable consequence of his policies is to hand the only democracy in the Middle East an impossible dilemma with no easy choices or likely good outcomes.
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Does it still really endure?
Gettysburg Address anniversary: Our American greatness endures.
By Salena Zito
GETTYSBURG-
“It is a speech that defines us, just as this battlefield defines us: The former reminds us to endure; the latter reminds us to never repeat.
In an era where deep political divisions fill our social media feeds, our cable news reports and nearly every aspect of our culture, it is heartening to make the bend on Baltimore Pike and find hundreds and hundreds of young families crowding into the Gettysburg National Park Military Museum.
Aditi Varma was waiting in the massive lobby of the museum with her two children, son Raghav and daughter Alahaead, while her husband, Mudit, bought the tickets for the family to enjoy the museum and a guided battlefield tour.
"Our son really is interested in American history," Varma says. "He is studying the Civil War, and he really wanted to come here." The Varma family, who were all born in India, now live in Princeton Junction, New Jersey, and had just made the first half of a six-hour round trip for a day at the national park.
The Renner-Grady-Deal family has deep ties here: five sets of grandfathers fought in the battle, including Samuel Grady, whose great-great-grandson and namesake, 7-year-old Sam Grady, from Bethesda, Maryland, was there with his parents and grandparents and cousins.
"Sometimes when you are in the moment of something great, especially one that would steer the course of the country, it's hard to understand the bigness of what's really happening," said Sarah Grady, Sam's mom.”
Click here for the full story.
AND:
I rest my case:
The Biden Administration Just Forced Every American Town To Host Illegal Immigrants
By Jon Feere
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