RUTHFULLY YOURS

Last night I was at Carnegie Hall for a remarkable jazz event. Two septuagenarians – jazz legends Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea gave a joint performance to a packed house. Herbie Hancock was dressed in a stylish suit and Chick Corea was in his requisite jeans, but when they sat down and played the magic started.

I love classical music and musical comedy- but there is something about jazz that is so uniquely American and when the two great pianists got together last night it was dazzling and breathtaking and fun. Every age, every race, every gender was represented in the cheering crowd. It was impossible to avoid finger snapping and foot stomping when those two improvised. They invited participation from a willing audience who hummed, sang, clapped and jammed…What a great break from all the gloomy news..rsk

The president who thinks there’s such a thing as an “Austrian” language is advising Rand Paul to “bone up on foreign policy.” It’s now official: the Obama administration has become a recurring skit on Saturday Night Live.

This is the same Barack Obama who became president after 2 indifferent years in the Senate, which were preceded by stints as a state legislator, a part-time teacher of law, and a community organizer. In the Senate his scanty foreign policy experience and knowledge manifested itself in his 2007 opposition to the “surge” of forces in Iraq, which he called a “mistake” and a “reckless escalation,” comments followed up by the introduction of legislation to remove all forces by the end of March 2008 no matter what.

The surge, of course, was a rousing success, reducing violence and disorder in Iraq and creating the conditions for further political stability. Handed this victory on taking office, Obama then squandered it by failing to sign a status of forces agreement just so he could brag that he ended the war and brought all of our troops home. The sequel can be seen in northern Iraq, where ISIS rapes, plunders, murders, beheads, and enslaves across territory our splendid soldiers had bled and died to win.

Former Secretary of State James A. Baker, III, represents everything the Jewish left hates.

He’s a lifelong Republican, a former chief of staff to President Ronald Reagan and a former member of Reagan’s cabinet. Baker’s positions on hot button social and political issues are the exact opposite of the positions taken by liberal-minded Jewish Democrats.

Yet there was Baker delivering the keynote address at J Street’s national conference in late March, the most prominent left-wing Jewish group in America.

How is that possible?

The answer is that James Baker and J Street have found one issue on which they can agree, and they are both so obsessed with that issue that they are willing to set aside their many and extreme differences, in order to join forces in their common cause: blasting Israel.

Before Global Warming posters hung on the dingy walls of American classrooms, the atomic bomb was the original Great Bogeyman of the left. Nothing quite so demonstrated the madness of our war machine as our willingness to deploy weapons of mass destruction to stop Communism in its tracks.

The self-righteous antics over nuclear weapons in literature, art, film, at protests and in papers are far too numerous to document. But you can still spot the occasional clunker with “One nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day” or “You can’t hug a child with nuclear arms” peeling off one lopsided bumper.

Just don’t expect its owner to oppose Iran’s nuclear program over its day-ruining hug-denying nature.

Mr. Peterson is the executive director of the Davenport Institute for Public Engagement at Pepperdine’s School of Public Policy.
What happens when those in power adopt ‘rules for radicals’ to attack their less powerful opponents.

Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva, the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, recently caused a stir by sending letters to seven university presidents seeking background information on scientists and professors who had given congressional testimony that failed to endorse what is the conventional wisdom in some quarters regarding climate change. One of the targets was Steven Hayward, a colleague of mine at Pepperdine’s School of Public Policy.

Though the congressman lacked legal authority to demand information, his aggressive plan, which came to light in late February, should not be a surprise at a time when power holders from the White House on down are employing similar means against perceived enemies.

“From his West Wing waltz with a selfie stick, to his exclusive interview with neon-lime-lipstick-wearing GloZell Green, to his truancy during Paris’s Charlie Hebdo march, to his 223 rounds of golf, to his screaming-infant-like reaction to the reelection of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Obama has soiled his office, turned himself into a punch line, and fundamentally transformed his country into a global laughingstock. Obama has betrayed blacks as a community, failed Americans as a people, and enfeebled the United States as a nation.”

And Republicans should remind them. As a declared presidential candidate, Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.) should generate even bigger headlines when he addresses black audiences, as he has at Howard University and other venues. When he was executive of mainly Democratic Milwaukee County, Governor Scott Walker (R., Wis.) appealed to black voters; his reelection majorities consistently increased.
These and other Republicans should ask black Americans for their votes from now through November 2016. They should do so by challenging blacks to ask themselves an honest question: “What, exactly, have you gained by handing Obama 95 percent of your votes in 2008 and 93 percent in 2012?” This economy has left blacks with little to show for their loyalty to Obama and the Democrats. The unemployment rate has fallen under Obama, from 7.8 percent when he was sworn in on January 20, 2009, to 5.5 percent last month.

Fred Fleitz, a former CIA analyst, is senior vice president for policy and programs for the Center for Security Policy.
That Iranian demand should have been a deal breaker for the United States and its European allies. It is now clear from the framework nuclear deal with Iran announced last week that the final nuclear agreement will permit Tehran to continue to enrich uranium. Although U.S. and Iranian officials disagree on specifics, Iran also will be allowed to develop advanced uranium-enrichment centrifuges while a for the duration of a final agreement. According to a French fact sheet on the framework, Iran will be permitted to install advanced centrifuges between the tenth and 13th years of a final agreement, a detail left out of the Obama administration’s account of the framework deal. President Obama inadvertently confirmed the consequences of this concession when he told NPR on April 7 that Iran’s breakout time to a nuclear bomb will shrink “almost down to zero” in 13 to 15 years because of a final deal based on the framework.

As the Summit of the Americas approaches, we again see that dictators have more sway over its agenda than democracies. Not that long ago, when the Western Hemisphere’s leaders would gather at the Summit of the Americas, the only price of admission was to be the duly elected representatives of democratic nations.

In recent summits, that democratic requirement has been tested, as Latin American leaders who came to power by winning elections then became authoritarian rulers who have weakened democratic institutions, taken over media outlets, arrested or intimidated political opponents, and stolen elections. As the next Summit gets underway in Panama this weekend, that democratic prerequisite is sadly being fully discarded as Cuban dictator Raúl Castro participates for the first time. Allowing a brutal dictator to attend undermines the future of democracy in the region.

Already we’ve seen more evidence of the summit’s being influenced by Cuba than of Cuba’s being influenced by the summit’s principles supporting democracy. This past weekend, members of Cuba’s real civil society were subjected by Panamanian authorities to questionable detentions, searches, and threats “to not make any trouble.” Then on Wednesday afternoon, a group of Cuban dissident leaders and American citizens supporting them were attacked in Panama City by agents of the Castro regime.

For Palestinian Authority (PA) leaders, the desire to punish Israel is stronger than the will to save the lives of thousands of Palestinians being killed in Syria by the Islamic State and starved by the Syrian army, which has been besieging Yarmouk for 700 days.

Instead of devoting their energies and efforts to stop the massacres in Yarmouk, PA officials were busy preparing a new draft resolution to be submitted to the UN Security Council, establishing a timeline for ending Israeli “occupation.”

The Arab foreign ministers who met in Cairo earlier this week to discuss ways of backing the new Palestinian bid, deliberately ignored that, as they were chatting and sipping coffee, Palestinians were being slaughtered and forced to flee their homes in Yarmouk.

For the PA, Jews participating in a marathon seems to be more serious and life-threatening than Islamic State terrorists beheading Palestinians and destroying Palestinian homes in Yarmouk.

“All that is left for us to do is howl, slap and cry.” — Ashraf al-Ajrami, former Palestinian Authority minister.

As Palestinians were being killed and beheaded by Islamic State terrorists in the Yarmouk refugee camp near Damascus over the past week, Palestinian leaders once again proved that delegitimizing and isolating Israel is more important than caring about their people.

f there were an award for double standards, for getting crazily angry about some people’s behaviour while turning a blind eye to other people’s behaviour, anti-Israel activists would win it every year.

These are people who take to the streets to march and holler whenever an Israeli warplane leaves its hangar, yet who say next to nothing about the militarism of France, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and too many other states to mention.

They bang on endlessly about Israel being an apartheid state, yet through BDS they have created a system of cultural apartheid. In their eyes, culture created by us, or by China, or by Zimbabwe, is fine, but culture produced by them, those nasty Israelis, must be hounded out of theatres and galleries lest it infect us all with its contagious Zionism.

These are activists who cry “Censorship!” when a conference of theirs is pulled, as happened at Southampton University recently. Yet they spend the rest of their time agitating for the No Platforming of Israeli representatives on campus and for the shutting down of pro-Israel university societies. “Free speech! (For nice people like me, not for rotters like you)” — that’s their fantastically hypocritical motto.

And now we can see that their double standards extend even to the people they claim to care for: the Palestinians.

Even here, even on the question of Palestinian suffering, anti-Israel activists only care some of the time. If you’re a Palestinian whose life is made harder by Israeli forces, they’ll share pictures of you, march in the streets for you, write tear-drenched tweets about you. But if you’re a Palestinian under threat from a non-Israeli force, forget about it. You’re on your own.

This has become clear in recent days, following reports that the Islamic State’s deathly grip now reaches into the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk in Syria.