Displaying posts published in

2016

Obama’s Israel Sequester He arm-twists an ally to do an end-run around Congress.

The Obama Administration has used various means to usurp Congress’s power of the purse, but twisting the arm of an ally is a new low. That’s what the President in effect did this week by requiring Israel to accept his spending limits in return for a modest boost in military aid.

As diplomats rolled into the U.S. for the U.N. General Assembly this week, the White House rolled out a deal with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that would provide $38 billion in military assistance to Israel over the next decade. The previous agreement, which ends in 2018, included $3.1 billion in annual aid. While the Administration is advertising its “unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security,” its real feelings are betrayed by the fine print.

Start with the fact that Congress typically tacked onto the $3.1 billion an additional $500 million each year for missile defense. Thus the new agreement represents a mere 5% increase amid growing Middle East threats, which will likely proliferate over the next decade thanks to the Administration’s retreat from the region and nuclear deal with Iran.

The aid is also less than the $4 billion annually that Mr. Netanyahu sought and the Senate wanted to provide. After Lindsey Graham, who chairs the Senate appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations, refused to sign off on the deal, the Administration impelled Israel to agree not to lobby for more aid and to return any funds Congress appropriates in the future that exceed the agreement’s terms.

In other words, the Administration has pressured Israel to cut out Congress. While the deal isn’t binding on Congress, Israel would be accused of bargaining in bad faith if it doesn’t keep its word. It’s unclear why Mr. Netanyahu would agree to such self-abnegation, but he might be hedging his political bets.

In March Donald Trump professed that he would make Israel repay U.S. military assistance. The chance that Mr. Trump might win and keep that promise might have convinced Mr. Netanyahu to lock in the Administration’s spending caps. On the other hand, if Democrats take the Senate and House in a rout this November, they might also want to pare back aid to Israel to pad domestic spending.CONTINUE AT SITE

Travel Back to an Early Clinton Scandal Voters have the impression Hillary isn’t trustworthy. She’s been reinforcing it since 1993. Peggy Noonan

The question came up this week at a political panel: Why don’t people like Hillary Clinton?

Why do they always believe the worst? Why, when some supposed scandal breaks and someone says she’s hiding something, do people, including many of her supporters, assume it’s true?

The answer is that Mrs. Clinton has been in America’s national life for a quarter-century, and in that time people watched, observed and got an impression of her character.

If you give the prompt “Clinton scandal” to someone under 30, they might say “emails,” or Benghazi” or “Clinton Foundation,” or now “health questions.” But for those who are older, whose memories encompass the Clinton era, the scandals stretch back further, all the way to her beginnings as a national figure.

Seventeen years ago, when word first came that Mrs. Clinton might come to New York, a state where she’d never lived, and seek its open U.S. Senate seat, I wrote a book called “The Case Against Hillary Clinton.” It asserted that she would win and use the Senate to run for president, likely in 2008. That, I argued, was a bad thing. In the previous eight years she’d done little to elevate our politics and much to lower it. So I laid out the case as best I could, starting with the first significant scandal of Bill Clinton’s presidency.

It is worth revisiting to make a point about why her poll numbers on trustworthiness are so bad.

It was early 1993. The Clintons had just entered the White House after a solid win that broke the Republicans’ 12-year hold. He was a young and dashing New Democrat. She too was something new, a professional woman with modern attitudes and pronounced policy interests. They had captured the national imagination and were in a strong position.

Then she—not he—messed it up. It was the first big case in which she showed poor judgment, a cool willingness to mislead, and a level of political aggression that gave even those around her pause. It was after this mess that her critics said she’d revealed the soul of an East German border guard.

The Clinton White House was internally a dramatic one, as George Stephanopoulos later recounted in “All Too Human,” his sharply observed, and in retrospect somewhat harrowing, memoir of his time as Mr. Clinton’s communications director and senior adviser. He reported staffers and officials yelling, crying, shouting swear words and verbally threatening each other. It was a real hothouse. There was a sense the gargoyles had taken over the cathedral. But that wouldn’t become apparent until later. CONTINUE AT SITE

Trump and the Art of Growth He sets a clear contrast with Clinton on taxes, regulation and energy.

Donald Trump’s economic program has gone through several revisions and now deserves a citation at Trump University for “most improved.” The candidate’s New York Economic Club speech on Thursday, which included new tax reform details, was an encouraging if sometimes contradictory performance.

Mr. Trump’s rhetoric is often grim, but in New York maybe for the first time he talked more about solutions than problems. He even mentioned unrealized human potential. “We reject the pessimism that says our standard of living can no longer rise, and that all that’s left to do is divide up and redistribute our shrinking resources,” he said.

Mr. Trump identified economic growth as the most important domestic priority and set a “national goal” of reaching 4% from the 1%-2% trend of the Obama economy. That’s ambitious, but 2% isn’t some immutable ceiling and better policy could lift GDP. Jeb Bush also took a 4% pledge, and such commitments are important in setting a direction for governance.
Growth can seem abstract, but it’s a general proxy for the standard of living. At 1%, the real economy will take about 70 years to double in size. At 2%, it’s about 35 years and at 3% only about 25. The question is whether Americans will benefit from the gains of this doubling of national wealth in their prime working years, or never. No major problem—from flat incomes to budget deficits to poverty—can be solved without faster growth.

Mr. Trump’s plan to overhaul a tax code that hasn’t been updated in 30 years would help. He’d collapse the individual income tax brackets from seven to three, with rates of 12%, 25% and 33%. To help make the fiscal math work, he introduced a new cap on deductions of $100,000 for single filers and $200,000 for couples. A cap is shrewd politics because it means not going to war with every pressure group in Washington that lives off loopholes. CONTINUE AT SITE

Hillary Clinton: Basket Case Who really belongs in the basket of deplorables? Michael Cutler

On September 10, 2016 Fox News reported, “Clinton: Half Of Trump Supporters ‘Basket Of Deplorables’ — ‘Racist, Sexist…You Name It.’”

This is the same Hillary Clinton whose campaign slogan, “Stronger Together” clearly does not include Americans who support Donald Trump and the effective enforcement of our immigration laws.

My recent article, “Balkanized America: Politicians, pollsters, and pundits are all responsible for the nation’s division” addressed the way that Americans are being turned against each other by flawed polls and the disgusting notion that voters’ desires are determined by their race, religion or ethnicity.

This is the parallel universe of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and their immigration anarchist cohorts wherein “Latino voters” supposedly oppose border security and effective immigration law enforcement.

To suggest that the conduct, goals and aspirations of Americans can be predicted solely by their race is, by definition, a blatant example of racism. This constitutes a vile form of profiling that would never be and should never be tolerated if done by law enforcement officers.

Furthermore, Hillary labels anyone who wants our borders secured and immigration laws enforced as xenophobic and racist, blithely ignoring the irrefutable fact that our immigration laws are utterly and completely blind as to race, religion and ethnicity.

America’s immigration laws were enacted to protect public health, national security, public safety and the jobs of American workers.

While Clinton brands as “racists’ those understand the truth, that our nation’s borders and immigration laws are our first line and last line of defense against international terrorists and transnational criminals and who therefore want our borders secured and our immigration laws enforced, in reality, she is actually the racist.

Furthermore, Americans who want our immigration laws enforced are not “Anti-Immigrant” as Hillary would have Americans believe, but are simply “Pro-Enforcement.” To be pro-enforcement is to be “Pro-immigrant.” Under our immigration laws, annually, the United States admits roughly one million lawful immigrants. The number of new immigrants the United States admits each year is greater than the number of new immigrants admitted by all of the other countries of the world combined.

The Connection between Al-Qaeda and Black Lives Matter Al-Qaeda has been inciting blacks against whites for over a decade. Raymond Ibrahim

Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri made a new video that appeared on September 9. It offers little that is new: 9/11 is again praised and portrayed as a product of Muslim grievances and payback for Western crimes; he vows a “thousand more” 9/11s; and warns against apostates being more dangerous than original infidels.

Only one angle stands out—again, not because it is new, but because it sheds light on a growing phenomenon: black violence against police in general, in the context of Black Lives Matter in particular. In last week’s video, Zawahiri called on American blacks to convert to Islam, asserting that they will never receive justice and will always live in “humiliation” until they convert to Islam and rebel against the “white majority.” He even showed footage of the Nation of Islam’s Malcolm X preaching.

While many conclude that al-Qaeda is opportunistically trying to exploit groups like BLT, the reality may be that BLT has from the start long been influenced by al-Qaeda’s rhetoric and propaganda (which, as usual, is quietly disseminated on the ground, not by al-Qaeda, but by its many Muslim sympathizers in America). For Zawahiri has in fact for years been calling on American blacks to turn against whites and quoting Malcolm X.

Nearly a decade ago, Zawahiri issued a similar message:

That’s why I want blacks in America, people of color, American Indians, Hispanics, and all the weak and oppressed in North and South America, in Africa and Asia, and all over the world, to know that when we wage jihad in Allah’s path, we aren’t waging jihad to lift oppression from Muslims only; we are waging jihad to lift oppression from all mankind, because Allah has ordered us never to accept oppression, whatever it may be…This is why I want every oppressed one on the face of the earth to know that our victory over America and the Crusading West — with Allah’s permission — is a victory for them, because they shall be freed from the most powerful tyrannical force in the history of mankind.

American blacks, however, were Zawahiri’s primary targets. He again praised and quoted from Malcolm X: “Anytime you beg another man to set you free, you will never be free. Freedom is something you have to do for yourself. The price of freedom is death.”

The Dirty Attorney General Going After Trump “The Attorney General is doing everything possible to make sure Hillary Clinton is elected our next President.” Daniel Greenfield

The Clinton Foundation is a national and international scandal. It’s under investigation by the FBI, but not by the Attorney General of New York, who is instead targeting the Trump Foundation.

The media has spent weeks suggesting the existence of an inappropriate political relationship between Trump and Florida AG Pam Bondi. And yet it’s cheering the wildly inappropriate relationship which has resulted in a member of Hillary’s leadership council investigating her political opponent.

Some months ago, the spokesman for Attorney General Eric Schneiderman had defended the trip he made to Miami Beach using donor money because he was fundraising for Hillary Clinton.

“This year, the Attorney General is doing everything possible to make sure Hillary Clinton is elected our next President.”

No one can argue with that as he abuses his office to launch his second legal attack on Trump.

Attorney General Schneiderman had previously made headlines for joining a group named “AGs United for Clean Power” to harass companies that questioned Global Warming. Some might have thought that blatantly identifying with one industry while harassing another would mean that Eric had hit peak conflict of interest. But then he opened an investigation into a rival political campaign.

“My interest in this issue really is in my capacity as regulator of nonprofits in New York State,” he insisted. “I didn’t make a big deal out of it or hold a press conference.”

The place he wasn’t making a big deal out of it was on CNN.

Schneiderman has no problem with the Clinton Foundation violating state regulations. But then again why would he? He endorsed the woman behind it and serves on her leadership council.

Bill Clinton had not only endorsed Schneiderman, but households across the state were irritated to hear a recording of him on their answering machines urging them to join him in voting for Eric. In June, Schneiderman was in Miami for an event benefiting the “Hillary Victory Fund.”

And he is still doing what he can for Hillary’s victory.

The Legacies of Barack Obama Without policy achievements to hang his hat on, Obama’s rhetoric will be how he’s remembered – and the results have been ugly. By Victor Davis Hanson

On his recent Asian tour, President Obama characterized his fellow Americans (the most productive workers in the world) as “lazy.”

In fact, he went on to deride Americans for a list of supposed transgressions ranging from the Vietnam War to environmental desecration to the 19th century treatment of Native Americans.

“If you’re in the United States,” the president said, “sometimes you can feel lazy and think we’re so big we don’t have to really know anything about other people.”

The attack on supposedly insular Americans was somewhat bizarre, given that Obama himself knows no foreign languages. He often seems confused about even basic world geography. (His birthplace of Hawaii is not “Asia,” Austrians do not speak “Austrian,” and the Falkland Islands are not the Maldives).

Obama’s sense of history is equally weak. Contrary to his past remarks, the Islamic world did not spark either the Western Renaissance or the Enlightenment. Cordoba was not, as he once suggested, an Islamic center of “tolerance” during the Spanish Inquisition; in fact, its Muslim population had been expelled during the early Reconquista over two centuries earlier.

In another eerie ditto of his infamous 2008 attack on the supposedly intolerant Pennsylvania “clingers,” Obama returned to his theme that ignorant Americans “typically” become xenophobic and racist: “Typically, when people feel stressed, they turn on others who don’t look like them.” (“Typically” is not a good Obama word to use in the context of racial relations, since he once dubbed his own grandmother a “typical white person.”)

Too often Obama has gratuitously aroused racial animosities with inflammatory rhetoric such as “punish our enemies,” or injected himself into the middle of hot-button controversies like the Trayvon Martin case, the Henry Louis Gates melodrama, and the “hands up, don’t shoot” Ferguson mayhem.

Most recently, Obama seemed to praise backup 49ers quarterback and multimillionaire Colin Kaepernick for his refusal to stand during the National Anthem, empathizing with Kaepernick’s claims of endemic American racism.

What is going on in Obama’s home stretch?

Apparently Obama is veering even further to the left, in hopes of establishing a rhetorical progressive legacy in lieu of any lasting legislative or foreign-policy achievement. Turning the presidency into an edgy soapbox is seemingly all that is left of Obama’s promise to “fundamentally transform” the country.

But divisive sermonizing and the issuing of executive orders are not the same as successfully reforming our health-care system. The Affordable Care Act, born of exaggeration and untruth, is now in peril as insurers pull out and the costs of premiums and deductibles soar.

United Nations Rebuked for Promoting Palestinian Ethnic Cleansing of Jews David Singer

United Nations member States need to examine their own consciences and policies following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu castigating them for promoting a Jew-free Palestinian Arab State in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and East Jerusalem. In a video presentation last week Netanyahu declared:

“Israel’s diversity shows its openness and readiness for peace.

Yet the Palestinian leadership actually demands a Palestinian state with one pre-condition: No Jews.

There’s a phrase for that: It’s called ethnic cleansing.

And this demand is outrageous. It’s even more outrageous that the world doesn’t find this outrageous.

Some otherwise enlightened countries even promote this outrage”

The Oxford Dictionary defines “enlightened” to mean “having or showing a rational, modern, and well-informed outlook”

Enlightened United Nations member States lost their moral and humanitarian compasses when supporting United Nations Resolution A/67/L.28 passed on 29 November 2012 (“the Resolution”) which reaffirmed:

“the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to independence in their State of Palestine on the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967”

Among the 138 countries voting for the Resolution were enlightened States such as:
Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, France, Greece, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Philippines, Portugal, Russian Federation, Serbia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Uruguay and Venezuela

Canada, the Czech Republic, Israel, and the United States voted against the Resolution, whilst 41 others – including Australia – abstained.

800,000 Jews currently live in Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem under rights vested in them by:

* Article 6 of the 1922 Mandate for Palestine,

* Article 80 of the 1945 United Nations Charter, * Israel’s 1967 annexation of East Jerusalem

* The 1993 Oslo Accords.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared in 2010:

“We have frankly said, and always will say: If there is an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, we won’t agree to the presence of one Israeli in it,”

Like Hitler – Abbas made no secret of his racist plan to create a Jew-free State.

Member States of the United Nations remained silent. In voting for the Resolution they chose to march to the same tune.

Living With The Dialectic by Herbert London

For devotees of Marxist-Leninist dialectical materialism the world is in motion and “progress” occurs through struggles. It follows the Hegelian principle that an evolving thesis morphs into anti-thesis resulting in synthesis. Thus history is not the unfolding of spirit or individual intervention, but of class struggle through violent revolution which is inexorable. Since all things contain within themselves internal contradictions, which are the primary cause of motion, they ipso facto possess the seeds of their own destruction. Hence the strategy for historical evolution is using the existing methods of free will to undermine freedom. For example, applying the freedom of expression guaranteed by the First Amendment allows for the expression of a theory on which free speech is not permitted.

It is noteworthy that Black Lives Matter has been united with the Muslim Brotherhood in attacking the state of Israel since both of these organizations, intolerant of oppositional positions, employ the Constitution to brow-beat the American public, an almost classic use of the dialectic.

Recently George Soros’ Open Society Justice Initiative called for international regulation of private decisions on what information should be taken off the internet and what should remain. It is ironic – in an Orwellian sense – that an “open society” is calling for a closed society. Presumably there are those in Washington or perhaps in George Soros’ circle who are best prepared to tell us what should be on the internet.

At many American universities including Princeton, student groups have organized a campaign against free speech because it can be “insensitive”. These children of privilege might be offended by words even tasteless words that are used in texts and classroom discussions. What these students are really saying is we want to control the words and curriculum we study. The net result would be a narrowly defined curriculum by a minority of students imposed on an unwary majority.

Then there is the Colin Kaepernick imbroglio in which the San Francisco 49 quarterback insists on sitting for the national anthem as a protest; here too irony abounds. He claimed to be protesting oppression of blacks and people of color. What he ignores is that the economic strides made by blacks in the U.S. since the 1970’s are unprecedented. He ignores as well that most victims of crimes involve people of color harming people of color. Of course the First Amendment gives him the right to take a stand, but context is useful. Free speech allows the stupid to express an opinion, but in Kaepernick’s case the hypocrisy is palpable. This man of color was adopted by white parents and raised in a middle class home. Moreover, this “oppressed” black man earns 19 million dollars a year in a country where another black man is president. Here, too, this is not merely hypocrisy, but the unknowing application of the dialectic to unsettle the status quo.

GREAT DIAGNOSIS FROM STEPHEN KRUISER

https://pjmedia.com/election/2016/09/13/granny-vapors-to-return-to-campaign-trail-on-thursday/
Quick recovery from dehydrapneumoallergiitis. With a concomitant episode of chronic liaritis….rsk