RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Obama administration’s determination to reach an accord with Iran at any cost continues unabated. As the March 31st deadline approaches, the administration has taken to recklessly downplaying Iran’s increasing belligerence, as well as continuing a coordinated attack on Iran’s chief critic, newly re-elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

This weekend, the White House dismissed a speech by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei that included more chants of “Death to America” by both the crowd and Khamenei himself, insisting that it was only “intended for a domestic political audience.” Yesterday White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest doubled down on that contention when CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta asked “if those comments give this White House any pause about moving forward with a nuclear deal with that country?” “Those kinds of comments only underscore why it is so critically important that the United States and the international community succeed in preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” Earnest insisted. “And the best way for us to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapons is sitting down at the negotiating table and getting Iran to make very specific commitments that would prevent them from obtaining nuclear weapons.”

Hillary Clinton’s expected presidential run is being hailed as a chance to shatter the glass ceiling. That’s nonsense. Hillary rose to power solely on her husband’s sleazy coattails. She’s not self-made. And it shows. The recent e-mail scandal is just the latest in a life-long pattern of entitlement and hubris — traits successful women know can torpedo a career.

Strangely, feminists ignore the damning facts about how Hillary got where she is. Recently, Hillary addressed 5,000 Silicon Valley businesswomen — real career women. Vowing to “crack every last glass ceiling,” a hint at her White House ambitions, she urged them to demand equal pay and promotions. She invoked her own supposed early struggles to become the first female partner at the Rose Law Firm in Arkansas while a new mother.

During Hillary Clinton’s speech to reporters and analysts attending the Toner Prize journalism awards ceremony in Washington, DC, Mrs. Clinton employed variants of two classic Alinsky narrative manipulation tactics in targeting herself for ridicule over her use of a private email server and address during her time as Secretary of State. The use of her private server and email address allowed her to reverse the hierarchy of authority where the designation of government information is concerned. The use of the Alinsky tactics is meant to move the media on from this very damaging reality.

The UK’s Daily Mail quotes Mrs. Clinton as saying:

“I am well aware that some of you may be a little surprised to see me here tonight. You know my relationship with the press has been at times, shall we say, complicated…But I am all about new beginnings. A new grandchild, another new hairstyle, a new email account – why not a new relationship with the press? So here goes. No more secrecy. No more zone of privacy – after all, what good does that do me…”

Obama’s two terms showed us that he was a sore winner. Israel’s election showed us that he is even more of sore loser. Ever since Netanyahu survived an election that he was supposed to lose, Obama has been throwing a floor-pounding, siren-shrieking and high-kicking tantrum over the Jewish State.

Its latest kick and shriek had White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough sidling into the toxic atmosphere at the D.C. conference for the anti-Israel lobby J-Street to berate Netanyahu.

In attendance at the conference were such luminaries as Saeb Erakat, the PLO negotiator who had called Netanyahu a “filthy war criminal” and claimed that Hamas is “a political, not a terrorist movement.”

Also featured was Nabila Espanioly of Hadash, formerly the Israeli Communist Party. Nabila, a former Communist activist who had accused Israel of “State Terrorism”, told J Street about the need to fight “against fascism and against racism inside Israel.”

The main inspiration for this blog was this summary of the miracle of how the drought-ravished Jewish State overcame a full-blown water crisis by investing $4 billion between 2002 and 2010 to develop water technology that keeps its population and industries alive. Israel’s latest desalination plant, in Sorek, is now at full capacity, producing 627,000 cubic meters of drinking water daily. With the lowest rate of energy consumption in the world, its water is the cheapest and most efficient of any large-scale desalination plant. Israel has exported this knowledge worldwide. The San Diego desalination facility uses the reverse osmosis developed by Israel’s IDE Technologies, which has just opened a new office in the drought-ravished state of Texas. The Norwegian company, EnviroNor, is recruiting Israeli expertise to provide the water-processing technology necessary for its project to convert secondhand oil barges into floating desalination and wastewater treatment plants.

President Obama didn’t want to comment today on the allegations of unnamed White House officials that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been spying on the United States to undermine a nuclear deal.

“As a general rule, I don’t comment on intelligence matters in a big room full of reporters, and I think I’ll continue that tradition,” he quipped at a joint press conference with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

But he was ready to throw out some more soundbites in regard to how he feels about Netanyahu.

“With respect to Israel’s relations with the Palestinians, I think it’s important to understand that the issue here is not what I believe, but it’s what the Palestinians and the parties in the negotiations and the Israeli people believe is possible. That’s the most important issue,” Obama said. “You know, I’ve said before and I’ll simply repeat, you know, Prime Minister Netanyahu in the election run-up stated that a Palestinian state would not occur while he was prime minister.”

Under regulations announced Friday, fracking on federal lands will be subject to a costly new set of rules covering the entire process of drilling, from application to production. Under the new rules, drillers must submit a detailed plan with site and wastewater control information as part of a lengthy approval process. They must provide covered tanks for wastewater storage, a requirement now in force in only ten states. They must submit a complete report, including a listing of chemicals used within 30 days of well completion. Drillers on federal land will also be required to post their proprietary formulary of chemicals on a website, which could be subject to hacking or leaks. Since when has Coke been forced to post its secret formula online?

Coming on top of Obama’s veto of the Keystone XL pipeline and a host of other anti-oil and gas actions, including continued opposition to arctic drilling, the fracking regulations are further proof of the administration’s indifference to economic growth. Altogether, the administration’s hostility toward drilling is costing the nation hundreds of thousands of high-paying jobs.

Jeb Bush distanced himself Tuesday from James Baker, who is advising him on foreign policy, after the former secretary of state directed criticism at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Baker, who has been a close friend of George H.W. Bush since the two were young men in Houston, was announced as one of Jeb Bush’s 21 unpaid foreign policy advisers last month. In a speech to the left-leaning advocacy group J Street on Monday, Baker blasted Netanyahu for “diplomatic missteps and political gamesmanship.”

Politico calls J Street “left leaning”; it’s a hardcore leftist pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel organization. Speaking there is the equivalent of speaking to the Muslim Brotherhood or CAIR.

“While he respects Secretary Baker, he disagrees with the sentiments he expressed last night and opposes J Street’s advocacy,” Bush spokeswoman Kristy Campbell wrote in an email Tuesday.

The moves are part of a raft of new anti-terrorism measures aimed at preventing French citizens or residents from joining jihadist groups abroad. The new powers are controversial because they can be implemented without judicial approval.

“These are legal tools, but not tools of exception, nor of generalized surveillance of citizens. There cannot be a lawless zone in the digital space. Often we cannot predict the threat, the services must have the power to react quickly.” — Manuel Valls, Prime Minister of France.

“When you do a projection for the months to come, there could be 5,000 [Europeans waging jihad in Iraq and Syria] before summer and 10,000 before the end of the year. Do you realize the threat that this represents?” — Manuel Valls, Prime Minister of France.

The French government has cut the social welfare benefits of nearly 300 jihadists who have left France to join the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Amid a rapidly expanding jihadist threat, it has also started confiscating passports, imposing travel bans and blocking access to jihadist websites.

The moves are part of a raft of new anti-terrorism measures aimed at preventing French citizens or residents from joining jihadist groups abroad, and at slowing the spread of radical Islam at home. Muslim groups are criticizing the flurry of activity as “Islamophobia.”

Stalin’s Man In Spain ‘Between a Communist and a traitor there can be no relations of any kind,’ Carrillo told his father, a Socialist party member, in 1939.

Stalinism has left an ignominious pantheon, from the famous (Jean Paul Sartre) to the forgotten. Into the latter category falls Santiago Carrillo, the Spanish Communist leader who is now the subject of an exhumation by Paul Preston of the London School of Economics. As the author of “Franco” (1993), still the best biography of the caudillo, and “The Spanish Holocaust” (2012), a brilliant account of the atrocities in the country’s mythologized civil war (1936-39), Mr. Preston has a fair claim to being the world’s leading authority on 20th-century Spain. His new work tells the story of Franco’s “most consistent left-wing enemy,” whom the author knew and poetically deems “The Last Stalinist.”