Tom Sowell would have made an outstanding president. Not because he is black, not because he is an educator but because he is wise, practical, brilliant and decent. He has always been one of my heroes.
I tried to get him to come and speak here but he is a bit frail now but his mind is still one of the best in the nation when it comes to what outstanding conservative thinking is all about.
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This
is a draft of a speech I had the gall/chutzpah to send to President Trump, which he might consider making. It is so Un-Trump and un-characteristically presidential it
might be refreshingly effective.
First, Melania and I and our entire family extend to you and your
respective families the Happiest, Healthiest and best ever of New Years and may
God Bless America.
I know most in the mass media,
the Democrat Party and even some in my own party take issue with the manner in
which I speak and the method I use to communicate with the American
people. I know they wish I would curtail my twittering. I am
aware that my personality is unusual and my tongue often outraces my mind. Yes,
I also am combative .
I pledge to do better but I
also am who I am.
I also acknowledge I came into
the presidency as one of the more unprepared nominees ever, considering I have
been a brash businessman and successful real estate mogul all my adult life.
The first six months of the way The Oval Office was run attests to that.
I am not saying disregard what
I say but rather judge me by performance and, if you do, I believe you will see
me in a different light than I am constantly portrayed by a mass media that
still smarts from missing the boat and remains out of touch, living in
their biased cocoon. In fact, they still cannot understand why so many
"deplorables" came to my side.
The fact that the opposition
candidate was also out of touch and ran a poor and unfocused campaign, with no
rational message, cannot be ignored either.
Yes, I am boastful, yes I often
stretch the truth. That is the salesman in me. Again, look at what I and my party
have achieved in a year. We have brought about some significant changes
which are positive but we get little credit and mostly are subjected to
constant nit picking by the mass media and obstruction on the part of the
Schumer - Pelosi led opposition party.
I will not enumerate what I
consider are the positives because any fair minded American knows what they
are. Consumer confidence indicators tell the story.
All I ask is judge me and
my party by what we want to do, hope to achieve and will bust our guts to
accomplish and have.
I promised you I would work
hard, I would work to improve our economy, I would try my best to rebuild our
military, be fair to veterans and would replace Obamacare with something better
that offers consumer choice to all Americans and does not disrupt the doctor
patient relationship. I also said I would try and reverse the trend in
illegal immigration and yet be fair to those who, through no fault of their
own, were born here and have remained good citizens. I committed myself to
rebuilding our relationship with allies who no longer trusted our word like
Israel and Saudi Arabia for example and finally, I promised I would seek to
address our infrastructure problems.
I will end now with one request
- give me and my party a fair hearing and assessment of what we achieve
notwithstanding the opposition party's unwillingness to help make our
nation a better one for all our citizens.
I truly inherited a mess. We
have many serious issues facing us, the least of which is a nuclear ambitious N
Korea, an out of control, defiant Iran and radical Islamists, who will not stop
in their quest to overthrow democracies and who do not understand what human
rights means.
Thank you, good night and
again, God Bless America.
Iran's reach is all over the globe. War is inevitable. (See 1 and 1a below.)
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With two you get egg roll? (See 2 below.)
And:
Ari makes an interesting analogy. I cannot argue with anything he said because he is right on the ball. (See 2a below.)
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My friend and fellow memo reader's New Year Message. Hope springs eternity? (See 3 below.)
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Last memo until return from Orlando with Dagny.
I know everyone who receives my memos do not always agree with me and/or what I post . However, I appreciate the fact that you read them, send me your comments and at least acknowledge I make you think a little more about things than you might otherwise. That is my main mission - to inform and challenge one to reason.
I do not laways check everything I send of others and sometimes I am guilty of sending fake stuff,
I do believe that the truth is always somewhere in between but I also stand steadfast on much of what I write myself because, after some 70 plus years of reading and observing I have, I believe, learned about what works and what has not regardless of the good intentions motivating the philosophy.
There are certain truisms that stand the test of time and formed the basis of our nation's establishment
People want freedom, democracy is more likely to bring them benefits than any other political system. Capitalism is more likely to bring wealth and diverse choices than any other economic system. It is important that man (in the generic sense) have something beyond self to aspire to and America remains the greatest hope for mankind.
In our desire to better ourselves, we often believe what is new is preferable to what has been tried and proven to be worthy and belatedly we learn the grass ain't always greener. If it is said to be new and improved, be wary. As Reagan said "trust but verify." I am not against progress but progress that turns out to be mythical is not healthy.
I also believe, strongly, we must be responsible, hopefully leave the world a better place because we have an obligation to do so and finally, we must not take advantage of others but we also have an obligation to speak out and become informed.
Elliott Abram's book deals with the interchange between human rights and democracy and whether Arab and Muslim societies can come to grips with the concepts or are they impossible because of their religious beliefs, attitudes towards women and assorted dictates that conflict with the message and demands of human rights and democracy. He cites the views of many authors, academicians and philosophers and many have serious doubts and believe, for structural reasons, the Islamists win out over democracy. This is not a pleasant prospect for future world peace as terrorism spreads and access to WMD become more attainable. Only time will tell who wins in the end.
Perhaps, for those who believe in a higher being or force how man resolves this challenge is the ultimate critical issue we all need to think about and find solutions to because, at present, we seem to be on a path towards self-destruction.
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Dick
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1) Murder Most Foul in Argentina
A judge rules that a prosecutor investigating Iran was murdered.
ByThe Editorial Board
Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman was investigating President Cristina Kirchner’s links to Iran in January 2015 when he was found dead in his Buenos Aires apartment with a gunshot wound to the head. Now a judge has ruled that he was murdered.
In 2015 Mrs. Kirchner’s secretary of security immediately declared Nisman’s death an apparent suicide. That made little sense to those who knew Nisman, in part because he was hours away from presenting evidence to Congress that Mrs. Kirchner had made a deal with Tehran to cover up Iran’s responsibility for the 1994 bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish community center that killed 85 people.
When President Mauricio Macri took office in December 2015 he pledged that investigators would have the independence to discover the truth. The Journal reported in September that“twenty-eight government forensic experts, toiling at a secret facility for seven months, concluded” that Mr. Nisman was killed. They handed their findings to a federal court.
On Tuesday in a 656-page opinion, Argentine federal judge Julián Ercolini ruled that “the death of Prosecutor Nisman was not a suicide, and was brought about by a third party and in a painful manner.” He charged Diego Lagomarsino, who was an aide to Nisman, as an accessory to the murder.
The judge says Mr. Lagomarsino was the last person in the apartment and the bullet that killed the prosecutor came from the aide’s gun. Mr. Lagomarsino denies any role in Nisman’s death and says his boss asked him for the gun for protection.
Nisman is being vindicated in death. His thorough investigation led to the indictment of Mrs. Kirchner on treason charges earlier this month. As a sitting senator she has immunity for now but her former foreign minister, Héctor Timerman, is under house arrest. Let’s hope investigators keep following the trail to Tehran.
1a) Iran-Backed Syrian Troops Reported Just 7 Miles from Israel’s Border
Syrian troops supported by Iranian-backed militias and Hezbollah are on the verge of capturing a rebel-held village at the foot of Mt. Hermon, just seven miles from the border with Israel, The Times of Israel reported Wednesday.
Rebels in the village of Mugr al Meer report that they are being attacked by "heavy bombardments and artillery fire" from Syrian troops and their Iran-backed allies. The Syrian army reports that it has surrounded the village at the foot of Mt. Hermon, which "commands the Golan Heights."
The rebels in the village have reportedly been given 72 hours to surrender or face defeat.
Ibrahim al-Jebawi, a Free Syrian Army (FSA) official who is familiar with the situation told Reuters, “They were given 72 hours to surrender with fighters to go to Idlib or those who want to stay have to reach a settlement."
According to Hadashot news, Assad's forces and Hezbollah are considering an assault on the last significant rebel-held area in the region, Beit Jinn.
Rebel forces - including both members of the FSA and al Qaeda-affiliated fighters - are vastly outnumbered by the Syrian army and Shiite militias.
The rebels still hold some parts of Quneitra on the Golan Heights.
Addressing the threat to Israel's north, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated that Israel would not allow Iran to establish a presence in Syria, telling graduates of the IDF's pilot training, "We will not allow Iranian military forces to establish bases in Syria in order to attack us and we will act to prevent the manufacture of precise and deadly weapons aimed at us."
We have spent year one with Trump of Twitter and Trump of accomplishments.
ByDaniel Henninger
There is really only one question anyone asks today: What do you think of it? “It,” of course, being America’s presidency. Needless to say, one presidency wasn’t going to be enough for Donald Trump. In true Trumpian style, the New York developer has produced two presidencies in one year.
The two Trump presidencies exist as parallel universes. One is inhabited by Trump of Twitter, a character out of Rabelais’s novel “The Very Horrific Life of Great Gargantua.” Much of the American population is appalled by Trump of Twitter, who lives in a dark and deeply personal pool of feuds and fulminations. His first-year approval rating floated below 40%, while voters in Virginia and Alabama rejected his candidates, and him.
Existing alongside is a universe of solid, tangible economic success. Reporting on the season’s strong holiday retail sales, this newspaper noted that consumer confidence is at a 17-year high, with unemployment at a 17-year low—a time-frame that turns the Obama presidency into a forgotten memory.
Donald Trump entered office revved up from his victorious campaigns against Hillary Clinton, all Republican comers—and pretty much the whole wide world. It was us versus them, and “us” won.
On Jan. 20, President Trump delivered an us-versus-them inaugural speech. Later that day he declared war on the White House press.
No one should ever forget that Mr. Trump has been a career kibitzer, a nonstop source of often annoying opinion about everything. In real life you can say “enough already.” But Twitter allowed the formerly private Trump kibitzing to go mass market. On social media, nobody ever shuts up.
An atmosphere of eternal Trumpian battle and mayhem dominated the early period of the presidency. Simultaneously, however, Mr. Trump was making stellar, quality appointments to his cabinet and key White House policy roles, but it was hard amid the din to focus on them or their goals.
The White House instead came to be defined by the Bannon-Scaramucci-Priebus battles, by tales of Ivanka and Jared, and the daily bear-baitings with Sean Spicer.
For six months, Trump courtiers leaked self-destructively to a hostile press, and Mr. Trump looked less like a president than the ringleader of a traveling carnival.
It couldn’t go on, and it didn’t. In July, Mr. Trump named retired four-star Marine Gen. John Kelly as his chief of staff.
Until the Kelly appointment in July, the entire Trump government had operated in a state of constant distraction. It looked like failure. The attempt at ObamaCare reform, an attempt to legislate amid impossible tumult, was failure when three Senate Republicans voted against the bill in late July.
Mr. Kelly, who has worked in worse conditions, famously imposed discipline on the White House, but military discipline isn’t an end in itself. It exists to attain one goal: success. The relative calm Mr. Kelly’s discipline brought to the White House has allowed the successes of the parallel Trump presidency to come into focus.
This is the presidency of people Mr. Trump appointed to his government, who amid the Twitter and Mueller diversions went to work every day and executed serious policy goals: EPA’s Scott Pruitt, Betsy DeVos at Education, Interior’s Ryan Zinke, Scott Gottlieb at FDA. Add the judicial appointments. It’s a long list of accomplishment.
In the fall, Chief White House economist Kevin Hassett emerged to provide important justifications for the tax bill’s rate reductions. Less publicly, Gary Cohn, the former Goldman Sachs banker who became director of the National Economic Council amid much skepticism, has turned out to be the most ardent Democratic deregulator since Alfred Kahn was advising Jimmy Carter on getting the government out of the airline, shipping and trucking industries. (The Reagan economy reaped the benefit of this head start.)
The Democrats, who are overinvested in predicting national failure, and the media, overinvested in the Russian collusion story, will try to taunt Mr. Trump into reviving the cage-match atmospherics of the year’s first half.
It wouldn’t be the dumbest strategy, especially if Mr. Trump starts the year shooting at his own robust economy by starting trade disputes with Mexico, Canada, Japan, South Korea and China. But if Mr. Trump doesn’t rise to the bait, the Democrats’ carping will eventually look petulant and unattractive. Most Americans don’t want their presidency to fail utterly, but that looks increasingly to be what the party’s progressive factions are about.
For the moment, a correlation appears to exist between success and Donald Trump’s sense of calm. Yes, he still tweets, but with less unnerving animosity (as we go to press). Possibly over time, Mr. Trump will unify his two presidencies into a single venture. At year’s end, this is how a successful government is supposed to look.
2a) Too Many Flags in Trump’s First Quarter
The president advanced the ball far downfield, but thanks to penalties, he kept losing yardage.
ByAri Fleischer
The first quarter of President Trump’s term is almost over. To grade his performance in football terms, he deserves credit for moving the ball down the field over several different drives. But he has committed so many unnecessary roughness penalties, along with giving up one huge fumble, that he may have to gain 200 yards just to score one touchdown.
Mr. Trump does have to put up with biased referees. The press loves to blow the whistle on him. But face it, he earned more than a few of those penalties. The result is that despite many first-year accomplishments, opinion polls show the president isn’t getting credit for them.
The White House’s biggest political fear should be that even if the economy roars back and middle-class wages rise, it won’t help the Republicans or Mr. Trump. Many voters outside the president’s 35% base separate him from his accomplishments—and his words and tweets seem to be wearing people down.
Americans were evenly split on Mr. Trump when he came into office, with 45% approving and 45% disapproving, according to Gallup. Now the president is almost 20 points underwater, with 38% approval to 56% disapproval. Moreover, Mr. Trump’s opponents hate him more than his supporters love him. That’s a huge problem for the GOP and the president. Several special elections this year that Republicans should have won by double digits resulted in narrow GOP victories.
Normally, a first quarter like Mr. Trump’s would be worth a few touchdowns. The tax reform he signed last week was the most significant pro-growth overhaul since Ronald Reagan. It cut taxes on almost everyone, letting millions of Americans keep more of what they earn, and repealed ObamaCare’s individual mandate.
The economy is expanding by more than 3% a year, the unemployment rate is at a 17-year low, and America is exporting crude oil again. Mr. Trump’s conservative judicial appointments, including Justice Neil Gorsuch, are changing the bench for the better. Islamic State has been largely destroyed, Israel is once again a friend, and Iran has been put on notice.
But often after Mr. Trump runs a good play and picks up yardage, in comes a penalty flag, and back again he goes. Instead of running a presidency defined by policies, actions and laws, he frequently has made himself too hot to handle.
On Feb. 28, Mr. Trump gave a well-received speech to a joint session of Congress. He noted that it was Black History Month and talked about the importance of civil rights. “We are one people, with one destiny,” he declared. The speech was uplifting, unifying, conservative—and normal. Praise poured in from his base, but also from pundits, some Never Trumpers and even some Democrats.
Mr. Trump was advancing the ball. Four days later, he tweeted—without providing any evidence—that President Obama had wiretapped his phones in Trump Tower, calling it McCarthyism and citing Nixon and Watergate. Penalty flags flew.
Later the public learned that federal investigators, through a court order, had wiretapped Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who had an apartment in Trump Tower. But for six months, the red-hot accusatory tweet stood on its own. And since a legal court order isn’t exactly Watergate or McCarthyism, the penalty stood.
Two months later, Mr. Trump fumbled badly when he fired FBI Director James Comey. He tweeted that Mr. Comey had better hope there were “no ‘tapes’ of our conversations.” That turned out to be an empty bluff. Regardless of whether Mr. Comey was or wasn’t doing a good job, firing him was a mistake that led to Robert Mueller’s appointment as special counsel to investigate people associated with Mr. Trump’s campaign.
There is nothing wrong with a president’s using Twitter, especially to go around the mainstream press. But there is something wrong when Mr. Trump tweets to settle petty scores, such as celebrating Arnold Schwarzenegger’s firing from “The Apprentice” or saying that Mika Brzezinski was “bleeding badly from a face-lift” or retweeting the racist group Britain First. This was one unnecessary roughness penalty after another.
The tax cuts just enacted prove President Trump and the Republicans can govern. Next up could be immigration reform, a major infrastructure package, and perhaps welfare reform. Being tough and hitting opponents is part of the political game, but the lesson of the first quarter is that avoiding penalties is just as important.
Mr. Trump is capable of scoring a lot more points. As any head coach would advise, however, it won’t happen if he doesn’t show more mental discipline on the field.
Mr. Fleischer was White House press secretary for George W. Bush, 2001-03. He now leads Ari Fleischer Communications.
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I believe, in 2018, Schumer and Pelosi will bet on hatred trumping general voter acceptance . The Democrat's ad program, as with most all Democrat campaign ads, will be designed to stir up passion, will play to identity politics, negativism and will be predominantly cynical. They will likely have no choice because the economy should be on reasonably firm ground, GDP should be elevated above the Obama year's, employment should be low, wages should improving moderately and, unless we are at war with N Korea and//or Iran, the basic outlook should be satisfactory.
The one negative will be a deficit above 2017 because of the tax reduction effect which will take several years to kick in meaningfully.
Obama's interview with England's Harry was interesting. Those who like listening to our former president and think of him as a wise sage and constitutional genius must have been enthralled to see him on T.V again dressed in that casual, I'm just one of you, manner we came to know and he orchestrated so well.
The man was a disaster in my book. His inept policies left millions dead and refugees fleeing from regimes he boosted/protected by his feckless policies/threats. He helped restore Russia to their meddlesome prominence with his inane and naive reset policy..
His economic policies may ultimately lead to our nation's bankruptcy because they created a girdle on any robust effort to pay down the hole he put us in and our military capabilities were set back decades with the sequester nonsense.
He set back race relations in America, presided over and never solved the pitiful treatment of veterans, blew away a decent health care system that wound up costing billions and did little to solve the plight of the uninsured.
He pitted Americans against each other with his politics of envy and left a surging/unchecked Iran for his predecessors to deal with as well as his indifference towards N Korea.
What did he do for black education? He caved to unions. What did he do to solve black on black crime? What did he do to end ISIS' influence? What did he do to restore faith in government agencies or restrain the influx of illegal immigration?
If truth be known, I doubt he even improved his golf score.
As for Trump, he might not be lovable, he might be crude, he might not be a great orator but he is realistic and clear eyed. He sees the world and our adversaries for what and who they are and his recent security policy is based on the world as it is not as some presidents wished it to be and that includes our adversaries. He is willing to tell the bloodsuckers in the U.N. you need to get your act together if you want to maintain a friendship and get our dollars. He even defied he naysayers and is moving our embassy to Jerusalem and soon many others will follow.
Domestically, he is trying to give business a shot in the arm in the hope they will come back and help our employment picture. He is going to try and meet opponents half way on the DACA issue and rebuilding our infrastructure. He has already restored a semblance of good will towards those who protect us and he has called for government agencies to serve the people as they were always charged to do and not illegally play favorites etc. as so many did under Obama's orchestration.
Regarding his successes, he has been reviled by the haters and mass media who nit pick everything he does as they always highlight his negatives of which there are many and self-imposed to a large extent. He is a boisterous, brash New York real estate mogul trying to squeeze into the Brooks Brother's suit of a traditional president and to the smug Brookies it ain't fitting.
With all that, Trump remains upbeat, a fighter, forward looking, confrontational and a businessman who is still learning the ropes of political governance.
Democrats think he is a pushover and a narcissistic patsy.
Time will tell if they are right or so caught up in their echo cocoon of obstructive hatred to learn he is far better, clever and effective than they believe.
Meanwhile their disdain and use of a fake headline knows no bounds as they attack Melania.
(Newsweek is apparently so desperate for anti-Trump content that they will publish misleading /gotcha headlines about the First Lady. Newsweek wrote on Tuesday that First Lady Melania Trump was ordering the “removal of [a] near-200-year-old tree from the White House.” ) (See 1 below.)
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I finally finished Abram's introduction"Of Forty Year Human Rights Policy" and I learned he concluded GW came to embrace Human Rights as a distinct aspect of our foreign policy and that Sec. Rice was a co-partner in most instances. However, it took 9/11 to awake GW who previously shared his father's diffident view of introducing democracy. In Elliott's first chapter entitled "The Freedom Deficit" he discusses the pro and cons of why democracy continues to be a difficult embrace for Arab/Muslim societies. It is difficult for existing Arab/Muslim political societies to believe they are not the natural ones to perpetuate themselves, you have the Sunni Shia tribal divisions at work, you have the monarchical influence which is difficult to penetrate and how the rulers play the alternative Islamist threat to gain support and finally there are no existing democrats in thesesocieties. Because of all the discordant negatives, stated above, bringing democracy to Arab/Muslim nations, as GW believed and stated, will take a long time but is a must if world peace is a lingering objective. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Meanwhile, A Happy, Healthy New Year to all,even those who continue to walk down the obstructionist path thinking Trump's America cannot be great again.
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Dick
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1) MELANIA TRUMP ORDERS REMOVAL OF NEAR-200-YEAR-OLD TREE FROM WHITE HOUSE BY SYDNEY PEREIRA
The historic Jackson magnolia has been on the south facade of the White House since the 1800s—making it the oldest on the grounds. But Tuesday, Melania Trump reportedly made the decision to have it removed after tree specialists determined “the overall architecture and structure of the tree is greatly compromised,” the report stated, according to CNN.
CNN obtained documents from specialists at the United States National Arboretum, which determined the magnolia tree must be removed. The tree is “completely dependent on artificial support,” the document read.
The document said, “Without the extensive cabling system, the tree would have fallen years ago. Presently, and very concerning, the cabling system is failing on the east trunk, as a cable has pulled through the very thin layer of wood that remains. It is difficult to predict when and how many more will fail.”
A White House official told CNN that the first lady made the decision after reviewing and assessing professional information and historical documents. “Mrs. Trump personally reviewed the reports from the United States National Arboretum and spoke at length with her staff about exploring every option before making the decision to remove a portion of the magnolia tree,” Trump’s communications director, Stephanie Grisham, told CNN. “After reviewing the reports, she trusted that every effort had been made to preserve the historic tree and was concerned about the safety of visitors and members of the press, who are often standing right in front of the tree during Marine One lifts.”
The tree was about to fall, and experts recommended its removal. Mrs. Trump, according to Grisham, has requested to preserve the wood from the tree.
The tree is expected to be removed later this week. White House groundskeepers were prepared for the tree’s demise, however, and offshoots of the original Jackson magnolia have been growing nearby. They are around 8 to 10 feet tall and will be planted in the original tree’s place, according to CNN.
Documentation reviewed by CNN revealed the Jackson magnolia has had apparent damage as far as five decades back. Three trunks of the tree grew from the base—tangling together in a mess of shared bark. One of those trunks was removed, leaving an exposed cavity that was filled with cement. Back in the 1970s, this was the standard procedure in this circumstance. The concrete, however, permanently damaged the tree. By 1981, a large pole and cable system were installed and still hold up the tree today.
The document from the United States National Arboretum also noted that “the high winds resulting from frequent helicopter landings complicates the future of the [west limb],” saying that it “may fail in an unpredictable way.”
“We understand this is a historic tree, and all measures have been used to save it to this point in time. While we cannot comment on the need to preserve the tree as long as it stands, we believe eventually, the tree will fail,” the report stated, according to CNN.
The history of the tree stretches as far back as former President Andrew Jackson—who brought the tree from his farm, Hermitage, in Tennessee, according to CNN. Jackson’s wife, Rachel, died days after the 1828 presidential election. Following his inauguration, it is believed that Jackson wanted the magnolia tree planted in honor of his wife’s death. The exact date when it was planted is disputed, with some saying it was planted as late as 1835, according to Oak Ridger. There are two Southern magnolias, which were planted by Jackson sometime between 1829 and 1837, according to Dale Haney, the White House grounds superintendent. Presidents have long planted trees at the White House—including a cut leaf silver maple by former President George W. Bush in 2001 and a little leaf linden by former President George H. Bush in 1991.
The tree was featured on the back of the $20 bill between 1928 and 1998. A 1994 single-engine plane crash damaged the magnolia by slicing off one of its branches. Last year, former first lady Michelle Obama brought a seedling as a gift to the people of Cuba—which wasn’t the first time replanted seedlings have been gifted. The tree has been the backdrop for events from state arrival ceremonies and Marine One departures and arrivals to Easter Egg Rolls. The tree stands behind the press during these events.
This article has been updated to include additional information about the history of the Jackson magnolia and tree planting at the White House, and with additional insights about the decision to remove the tree. A previous version stated that Rachel Jackson died in 1928; that year has been corrected to 1828.
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Happy, HealthyNew Year. Off To Orlando and upon our return will be bringing Dagny for a week. Go BAMA!
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I just finished the Renoir biography and now am reading Elliott Abram's new book: "Realism and Democracy - American Foreign Policy after the Arab Spring."
I am still on the first chapter which is about "40 years of America's Human Rights Policy." A few presidents and secretaries of state embraced the concept, most did not. Reagan and Schulz did and most claimed to have (Carter) but when push came to shove they were selective etc.
Senator's "Scoop" Jackson and Moynihan were the earliest proponents of the concept based on the fact that a nation founded on human rights had no option but to make it a core principle of our foreign policy.
All too often, in our desire to rid a nation of a totalitarian regime, we helped replace it with something worse.
Though I am only 62 pages into an obviously well researched book of 244 pages, written by an author who was there, I have already added deep background knowledge to my surface understanding of the mechanisms of how foreign policy is made and conducted and the players involved.
Elliott spoke here last year at the SIRC President's Day Dinner and was well received and was one of our outstanding speakers. He is the Council on Foreign Relation's Middle Eastern Expert
Elliott's message is dealing with tyrants will not work. To beat Islam, America can only do so with a better idea - democracy, and we must not turn away from support for democrats in Arab countries in favor of pragmatism.
For anyone who is interested in Elliott's insight and why so many of our foreign policy approaches have failed I commend this book.
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To the Trump haters he is dumber than a brick wall but in terms of what is happening to IQ's , say in Sweden, Trump does not appear so stupid. (See 1and 1a below.)
I need to chat with Elliott about how this meshes with our human right's polices.
Meanwhile:
Schumer and Pelosi have decided it is politically wise to be negative. To want America's GDP to remain around Obama's 1% and possibly go lower if you provide tax relief. They want more government regulations so American industry is constrained and growth is chocked with needless red tape.
They want government to grow so it can have more to say about how we live our lives and they want government to dictate our health care so we can enjoy higher costs and lower personal care and total disruption in the doctor- patient relationship.
This could be a winning strategy because a new survey reveals well educated women are more likely to vote for Democrats than Republicans. I suspect this is the result of what students are learning from left wing radical socialist campus faculties and their comparable companions in the mass media.
If witless women want more Democrats perhaps they hate Trump more than they love their kids and their kid's future under socialism.
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This from a good friend and fellow memo reader. Let's end 2017 on an humorous/clever note. (See 2 below.)
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Dick
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1)https://www.steynonline.com/8334/the-great-brain-drain
The Great Brain Drain
by Mark Steyn Steyn on Culture
As longtime readers will have noticed, I'm increasingly bored by the daily soap opera of politics, mainly because professional politicians rarely have anything to say about anything that matters. The left nominally addresses the Great Remaking of the World - from mass immigration to transgender bathrooms - by confining itself to a few bogus sentimentalist bromides ("We've always been a nation of immigrants", "Love wins") designed to assure everyone that a) "diversity lotteries" and chain migration are a good thing; and, if you're minded to bring up problematic details, b) it's inevitable, so don't bother trying to resist. The right, on the other hand, is terrified of being demonized as racist, homophobic and whatever's next ophobic, and so finds it safer to talk about corporate tax rates.
Everyone who screwed the pooch on this one better realize fast: All that matters is immigration...
Republicans who treat immigration as a back burner issue should be required to run on the issues they consider more important -- in California. See how your arguments fare in a state that's already been transformed by immigration. That's your new country.
How stupid do you have to be to carry on about taxes, defense spending, ISIS, abortion or the Ten Commandments while intentionally losing on the one issue that will determine the outcome of all these other issues? Too stupid to be of any real help.
As I said to Tucker Carlson the other night, the demographic transformation of the western world is "the biggest story of our time", and it will indeed determine all the others:
~Taxes? Big Government welfare programs depend on a high degree of social solidarity between givers and takers. If you think in France or Germany that young Mohammed and Ahmed will be willing to pay higher and higher taxes so that Jean-Pierre and Fritz can continue enjoying their present thirty-year retirements, you're deluded.
~Defense spending and ISIS? More UK and Canadian Muslims have volunteered for the Islamic State than serve as soldiers of the Queen. As you can tell from their kid-glove treatment of returning jihadists, it's unlikely that these countries will still be willing to follow America into the sands of Araby as Islam becomes a bigger and bigger domestic and electoral consideration. As for the broader international order, two of the Big Five at the UN will be semi-Islamized (and, indeed, semi-Islamic nuclear powers).
~Abortion? Hispanics, we're told by Charles Krauthammer et al, are "natural conservatives", so in theory Latin-American immigration ought to be good for the pro-life lobby: After all, South America has some of the toughest anti-abortion regimes on the planet. Then again, once they get to the United States, Hispanics account for about a quarter of all abortions. So who knows?
To reprise an old line of mine from America Alone, the future belongs to those who show up for it. And, if those showing up in America, Britain, Sweden, Austria are dramatically different from the entire history of those polities, then the future will be something of a crap shoot. For example, this story from my old friends at The Spectator - "Is IQ Falling Across the West?"
According to Flynn's latest findings, the Nordic nations are projected to see national intelligence scores drop by a total of seven points by 2025.
You don't say. How'd that come about? After all, not so long ago everyone was gung-ho about 20th century upswings in IQ. Alas, Professor Timothy Bates is mystified:
What becomes of this optimism if it turns out that IQs are now falling across the developed world..? Something has happened in the last decade or so that has put progress into reverse in some countries and failed gifted children in others. We need to find out why and what to do to make sure its upward trajectory is restored.
"Something" has "happened", eh? In 1900 Sweden's foreign-born population was 0.07 per cent - or 35, 627, of whom all but 300 were from Europe or North America. By 2010 Sweden's foreign-born population was just under 15 per cent - or 1.33 million, of whom two-thirds were born outside the EU. In 2015, they admitted so many Muslim "refugees" that in the space of a single year they overtook China's "one child"-policy sex imbalance (119 boys for every girl) and in their late-teen cohort now have 123 boys for every girl. In the space of a century, from 1950 to 2050, Sweden will have gone from an homogeneous ethnic state with barely any visible minority population to a land in which ethnic Swedes will themselves be the minority.
You can't really do that sort of thing without upending everything - and I mean everything. For example, how does one observe Hanukkah in the new Gothenburg? With Molotov cocktails:
This past Saturday, a Hanukkah party at a synagogue in Goteborg, Sweden, was abruptly interrupted by Molotov cocktails. They were hurled by a gang of men in masks at the Jews, mostly teenagers, who had gathered to celebrate the holiday.
Would this be Sven and Inga heading to the Bring Your Own Molotov party? Or is it perhaps a different sort of Swede? Meanwhile, a couple of hours south:
Local police had made a much-criticised public statement advising women not to go out alone after darkness following the brutal rape of a 17-year old girl in central Malmö at the weekend.
It the third rape attack in the city in around a month, and occurred after midnight when the victim was walking through a playground area. On Sunday, the police officer leading the investigation was widely quoted in Swedish media advising women only go out in pairs or as part of a group after darkness.
So, in a country that boasts the world's first self-proclaimed "feminist government", it's unsafe for women to leave the house.
Would that be Björn and Anders after a couple of lagers and a Harvey Weinstein chick flick? Or is the sudden increase of rape due to factors more, um, vibrant and diverse?
In once boringly placid Sweden, all the indicators are going wacky. Whether or not you're in favor of wholesale demographic transformation as a matter of public policy, it would seem unlikely that you could accomplish such a thing in a couple of generations without it having some impact on IQ. In fact, it would render any comparative measure of IQ between 1950 Swedes and 2050 Swedes as completely pointless as comparing the IQ of whoever's passing through Gate Twelve at Heathrow with whoever's passing through Gate Twelve a century later from an arriving flight from an entirely different destination: The only constant is the real estate.
According to a 2007 study by the Rockwool Foundation, after ten years in the Danish school system, two-thirds of students with an Arabic background remain functionally illiterate. In Bradford, Yorkshire, 75 per cent of Pakistani Britons are married to their first cousins, many of whom are themselves the children of first cousins. In the new west, why even bother worrying about IQ? Professor Bates says he wants to get to the bottom of the "why" and the "what". But as I wrote eleven years ago in America Alone:
Stick a pin almost anywhere in the map, near or far: The "who" is the best indicator of the what-where-when-why.
And the more demographic transformation transforms, the more ill-advised it becomes to mention it. Before 9/11, even the BBC was happy to discuss whether the resurgence of rickets in the United Kingdom is due to Muslim dress. Sixteen years later, when UKIP bring it up, it's cited as proof they're a laughingstock. A question for Professor Bates and his colleagues is whether a society in which more and more subjects are ruled out of public discourse should expect its measures of intelligence to do anything other than head south. Thus:
The quality of what we called the student "clientele" had deteriorated so dramatically over the years that the classroom struck me as a barn full of ruminants and the curriculum as a stack of winter ensilage... The level of interest in and attention to the subjects was about as flat as a fallen arch. The ability to write a coherent English sentence was practically nonexistent; ordinary grammar was a traumatic ordeal. In fact, many native English-speakers could not produce a lucid verbal analysis of a text, let alone carry on an intelligible conversation, and some were even unable to properly pronounce common English words.
1a)
In the Mideast, Trump Gives Reality a Chance
The first step toward peace is to stop indulging the Palestinians’ fantasies of destroying Israel.
ByReuel Marc Gerecht
A lot of people are in a funk over President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The liberal media, most former government officials who’ve dealt with the Israeli–Palestinian imbroglio, and just about everyone at the United Nations appear certain that the decision had a lot to do with Mr. Trump’s disruptive nature, the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, Evangelical Christians and pro-Israel Republican donors.
It’s possible that his decision was based instead on an old-fashioned understanding of the way the world works, one that would be familiar to Middle Easterners: There are winners and losers in every conflict, and Palestinians have decisively lost in their struggle with the Jews of the Holy Land. Diplomacy based on denying reality isn’t helpful.
This view runs smack into the tenets of contemporary conflict resolution, in which diplomacy tries to make losers feels like winners, so that unpleasant compromises, at least in theory, will be easier to swallow. It alleviates the guilt of a Westernized people triumphing over Arabs that has made many in Europe and even the U.S. uncomfortable with Israeli superiority. It also runs counter to an assumption held widely among Western political elites—to wit, quoting the current French ambassador to the U.N.: “Israel is the key to peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.” Israelis, in this view, must make the big compromises.
The truth is surely the opposite. Recognizing the extent and irreversibility of Palestinian defeat is the first step in the long process of salvaging Palestinian society from its paralyzing morass. Far too many Palestinians still want to pretend they haven’t lost, that the “right of return” and Jerusalem’s unsettled status give hope that the gradual erosion of Israel is still possible. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas tapped a common theme among Palestinians in his recent oration before the Organization of Islamic Cooperation when he complained that Jews “are really excellent in faking and counterfeiting history and religion.”
The biggest problem the Palestinians have is that the Israelis don’t trust them, and the Israelis cannot be ignored, sidestepped, bullied, bombed or boycotted out of eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank. Fatah, the lead organization of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the muscle behind the Palestinian Authority, has often acted publicly as if the Israelis weren’t the foreigners who truly mattered, appealing to Europeans, Russians and Americans to intercede on its behalf. Americans and Europeans have consistently encouraged this reflex by stressing their own role in resolving the conflict, usually by suggesting that they would cajole or push Israelis toward Palestinian positions.
For the Israelis, this has seemed a surreal stage play. The Fatah leadership is well aware that only the Israeli security services have kept the West Bank from going the way of the Gaza Strip, where Fatah’s vastly better-armed forces were easily overwhelmed by Hamas in 2007. Fatah’s secular police state—and that is what the Palestinian Authority is—has proved, so far, no match for Hamas.
Western diplomacy has failed abysmally to recognize the profound split between Palestinian fundamentalists and secularists and played wistfully to the hope that a deeply corrupt Fatah oligarchy could conclude a permanent peace accord with Israel. This delusion’s concomitant bet: Such a deal would terminally weaken Hamas, since the secularists would have finally brought home the mutton.
The most important point, however, is always ignored. Competent, transparent, nonviolent Palestinian governance is the only chance Palestinian society has of escaping the fundamentalist critique that has undermined oligarchs across the Arab world. Fearful of playing the imperialists and keenly aware of the efficiency of having a police state as a partner, Americans, Europeans and Israelis have failed to use the leverage of financial aid to set standards for Palestinian governance on the West Bank and in Gaza.
Palestinian Muslims are no different than other Muslim Arabs. Religious militancy has grown astronomically over the past 40 years as the ruling secular elites have calcified into corrupt, hypocritical, heavy-handed autocracies. Westerners have not dealt with this well, since it defies the top-down approach inherent in diplomacy—and also because fundamentalists terrify them. Yet the past ought to tell Americans and Europeans that a two-state solution to the Israel–Palestinian clash isn’t going to happen before Palestinians reconcile in a functioning democracy that doesn’t scare their Jewish neighbors. The overwhelming burden here is upon the Palestinians.
The most valuable American contribution to the peace process, so far only episodically delivered, is to remind the Palestinians that they first have to get their own house in order and the Israelis that they have to care about how Palestinians treat their own. Too often, the Israelis have viewed the Palestinians—and Arab Muslims in general—as the ineducable “other,” who is best left to his own rules so long as Israelis aren’t killed. Any Israeli effort to control Palestinian-on-Palestinian abuse will surely be met with a hail-storm of censure from the West. But the Israelis ought to take a longer view. Barrier or no barrier, they are going to live with the Palestinians forever. Israel should certainly want to correct its enormous mistake of allowing Yasser Arafat, the father of Palestinian nationalism, to import his thugocracy into the West Bank and Gaza.
Most Arabs have adjusted, however reluctantly, to the permanence of Zion. They did so four decades ago when Egypt, slowly collapsing under its own military dictatorship, checked out of the war. Americans, Europeans and Israelis—not “the Arabs”—are primarily responsible for elongating the big Palestinian delusions about the “right of return” and a sovereign East Jerusalem. It’s way past time they stopped. Mr. Trump’s decision, whatever the motivation, is a step forward.
Mr. Gerecht is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
If you're not familiar with the work of Steven Wright, he's the famous Erudite (comic) scientist who once said: "I woke up one morning, and all of my stuff had been stolen and replaced by exact duplicates." His mind sees things differently than most of us do. . ..
Here are some of his gems:
1 - I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.
2 - Borrow money from pessimists -- they don't expect it back.
3 - Half the people you know are below average.
4 - 99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name.
5 - 82.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
6 - A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.
7 - A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
8 - If you want the rainbow, you got to put up with the rain.
9 - All those who believe in psycho kinesis, raise my hand.
10 - The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
11 - I almost had a psychic girlfriend, ...... But she left me before we met.
12 - OK, so what's the speed of dark?
13 - How do you tell when you're out of invisible ink?
14 - If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
15 - Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.
16 - When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.
17 - Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.
18 - Hard work pays off in the future; laziness pays off now.
19 - I intend to live forever... So far, so good.
20 - If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?
21 - Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
22 - What happens if you get scared half to death twice?
23 - My mechanic told me, "I couldn't repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder."
24 - Why do psychics have to ask you for your name.
25 - If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
26 - A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.
27 - Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
28 - The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread.
29 - To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.
30 - The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
31 - The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up.
32 - The colder the x-ray table, the more of your body is required to be on it.
33 - Everyone has a photographic memory; some just don't have film.
34 - If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
And the all-time favorite -
35 - If your car could travel at the speed of light, would your headlights work?
