RUTHFULLY YOURS

As Obama administration officials lobbied for the Iran nuclear deal before the House Foreign Affairs Committee today, the images of four Americans held in Iran stared back at them from the dais.

Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) taped photos of Marine vet Amir Hekmati, pastor Saeed Abedini, reporter Jason Rezaian, and retired FBI agent Bob Levinson underneath his microphone.

“I put their pictures here to remind you of them today,” Duncan told Secretary of State John Kerry. “I understand not using them as pawns in negotiations, but what should have been — what should have happened is they should have been released as a precondition before ever sitting down with Iran for anything.”

Regarding Hillary’s emails, Kremlinology is back in style.

Media folks have long viewed the New York Times as something akin to the Kremlin back in the heyday of its beloved Soviet Union. Times-watchers, like Kremlinologists, collect signs, signals and portents about what actually is taking place within the grim fortress near Times Square. So the recent brouhaha over Mrs. Clinton’s emails has brought Timesology roaring back to the fore:

Four days after a major error in a story about Hillary Clinton’s emails, the New York Times has published an editors’ note laying out what went wrong. The note, published late Monday night, said The Times’ initial story was based on “multiple high-level government sources,” but acknowledged that as the paper walked back its reporting, corrections were slow to materialize, and substantial alterations “may have left readers with a confused picture.”

The original story was published Thursday night. It initially claimed federal inspectors general had requested a criminal investigation into Clinton’s email use during her tenure at the State Department. Over the next few days, the story had numerous changes, including that the investigation request was for a “security” referral, which is far short of a criminal investigation. In addition, Clinton was no longer named as a target.

As careful readers have noticed, there is a proxy war going on inside the Times regarding the Dowager Empress of Chappaqua. On one side is the Obama administration, most likely in the person of Valerie Jarrett, furiously leaking damaging information about Mrs. Clinton during her disastrous tenure as secretary of state; on the other are the die-hard aging Clinton partisans (the Times once was filled with them) who are quick to rise to her defense. As the newspaper noted in its “correction”:

Barack ‘Son of the Soil’ Obama wrapped up his ‘Nudge Africa toward Gay Rights’ tour. Next stop, summer vacation in Martha’s Vineyard. Before heading home, Obama shared insights that are not only contradictory, they’re down right terrifying.

It was during a joint news conference with Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, after pushing for peace in civil war-torn South Sudan that Obama the race-baiter, responsible for stoking the flames of unrest in the U.S., urged Ethiopian leaders to restrain from imposing restrictions on the press and political debate.

Obama, who, when it comes to Tea Party activists, Fox News, and conservative talk radio doesn’t exactly practice what he preaches, reminded his hosts that “When all voices are being heard, when people know they are being included in the political process, that makes a country more successful.”

While the young woman who complained of lurid texts and wandering hands has been suspended without pay, the man she accuses of sexual harassment sails serenely on. He continues to describe himself as head of the IPCC as probers drag their heels and the Western media looks the other way.
Dr Rajendra Pachauri,until this February the world’s top climate bureaucrat, continues to operate at the helm of Delhi think-tank The Energy & Resources Institute (TERI), with no announcement that he has resigned or dismissed. There’s even speculation now that he might make a comeback in some new role at the United Nations.

In February, Pachauri, 75, was hit with a sexual harassment complaint by a 29-year-old TERI analyst, who provided police with more than 5000 incriminating texts stretching back to her first weeks at TERI in 2013. She also alleged he had assaulted her sexually and that, having repeatedly resisted his advances, Pachauri finally removed her from productive work.

When those on the left deliver their sermons on the threat of global warming and the need to do something about it, they accept the allegedly science without question. In doing so they elevate a misplaced faith in what they would term rationality above reason
Is anthropogenic climate change real? What’s most surprising about the climate change debate is how often commentators signal their stance by offering either a negative or an affirmative answer to this question. That is, most people seem to think that a mature response to climate change has to be based upon an assessment of the credibility of the specific scientific claims that are bound up in the notion of “climate change”. Whether one denies or affirms the reality of “climate change”, one is seen to be taking a position relative to some real or perceived consensus among scientists.

I want to suggest that it is really much more complicated than that. The dialogue between liberals and conservatives is rife with solecisms, and “climate change” is one of them. Because when liberals use the phrase “climate change” they are not simply referring to the hypothesis that carbon dioxide emissions from human activities are contributing to an exacerbated greenhouse effect which is resulting in an increase in average temperatures globally. By now, a set of progressive political programs designed to address climate change, and the attitudes that constitute acceptable speech on the subject, are inextricably bound up in the liberal notion of “climate change”. The question, “Is anthropogenic climate change real?” is, regardless of the science, already a politically loaded question.

“Maybe Republicans should nominate Donald Trump after all. We could have an election that completely fulfills the modern archetypal tendency to select candidates who crave the presidency to satisfy their own needs, not the country’s.”

How will six different capital-gains rates make managements or shareholders any less concerned with quarterly earnings? She doesn’t say.

Hillary Clinton would string syllables together in any order if she thought it would get her to the White House, so it’s with that giant asterisk that we examine the content of her capital-gains plan unveiled in a speech in New York last week.

That Mrs. Clinton found time at the end to notice any imperfections in government—for instance, that it can’t write and execute a budget—came almost as a shock in a speech designed to assure us that ultracompetent government can fix the failings of big business.

Why we’re suing to make the government do what it seems disinclined to do: get to the bottom of this murky matter.

The truth about Hillary Clinton’s email practices is murkier than ever.

On Friday news broke that the inspectors general for the State Department and the intelligence community raised serious concerns about the mishandling of classified information in conjunction with Mrs. Clinton’s emails as secretary of state, all of which were routed through a private email account and server. This was followed by reports in this paper that, despite her claims to the contrary, she sent multiple classified emails via her private account. Speaking to a TV station in Des Moines, Iowa, on Sunday, Mrs. Clinton responded by saying “it’ll all work its way out.”

Two of the most powerful members of the Democratic Party, former and current senators from New York, now hold the fate of the putative deal with Iran in their hands. Because they alone can overturn it, this means that presumptive presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and presumptive Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer carry a heavy burden that will deeply affect their personal reputations and, most probably, the trustworthiness of the Democrats in foreign policy for at least a generation.

Their former senatorial colleagues Barack Obama, Joe Biden and John Kerry already own their decision, though their logic still remains unclear to both the most diligent and the most casual observer. The president asserts that his piece of paper will prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons, presuming both the honesty of a regime that has displayed mendacity and hostility for 35 years as well as the existence of a wide-ranging verification capability that his own agreement has fatally compromised. And then, of course, there is the sunset provision that enables Iran to acquire nuclear weapons anyway. As they congratulate themselves on the hard work that produced this bizarre document—Bloomberg News related that “[a]ll present were in a kind of awe”—have these former Solons stopped to wonder why Iran negotiated in the first place when their leaders still insist on claiming they don’t want nuclear weapons? The entire process is built on lies. If the Iranians didn’t want nukes, then why would they want a time limit?

There was no ‘better deal’ with Iran to be had. Now this calamitous one offers Tehran two paths to the bomb.

Almost everyone who opposes the deal President Obama has struck with Iran hotly contests his relentless insistence that the only alternative to it is war. No, they claim, there is another alternative, and that is “a better deal.”

To which Mr. Obama responds that Iran would never agree to the terms his critics imagine could be imposed. These terms would include the toughening rather than the lifting of sanctions; “anytime, anywhere” nuclear-plant inspections instead of the easily evaded ones to which he has agreed; the elimination rather than the freezing of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure; and the corresponding elimination of the “sunset” clause that leaves Iran free after 10 years to build as many nuclear weapons as it wishes.

Since I too consider Mr. Obama’s deal a calamity, I would be happy to add my voice to the critical chorus. Indeed, I agree wholeheartedly with the critics that, far from “cutting off any pathway Iran could take to develop a nuclear weapon,” as he claims, the deal actually offers Tehran not one but two paths to acquiring the bomb. Iran can either cheat or simply wait for the sunset clause to kick in, while proceeding more or less legally to prepare for that glorious day.

Iran president invited to Paris as sides seek to boost ties
French foreign minister Laurent Fabius lands in Tehran, calls for a kickstart to the two countries’ relations following nuclear accord
Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani has been invited to visit Paris in November, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said in Tehran on Wednesday.The official invitation came in a letter addressed to Rouhani from French President Francois Hollande which Fabius delivered on his trip to the Iranian capital, two weeks after a nuclear deal was struck between the Islamic republic and world powers.