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2016

Harry Reid Recalls ‘Good Old Days’ When Trump ‘Did a Fundraiser or Two for Me’ By Bridget Johnson

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) today recalled “the good old days” when Donald Trump “did a fundraiser or two for me.”

Reid was asked outside a closed policy luncheon on Capitol Hill today about Trump’s compliments.

“I’ve always had a good relationship with Nancy Pelosi. I’ve never had a problem. Reid will be gone,” Trump told MSNBC yesterday, in reference to the Nevada senator’s impending retirement. “I always had a decent relationship with Reid, although lately, obviosuly, I haven’t been dealing with him so he’ll actually use my name as the ultimate — you know, as the ultimate of the billionaires in terms of, you know, people you don’t want.”

“But I always had a great relationship with Harry Reid,” Trump continued. “And frankly, if I weren’t running for office I would be able to deal with her or Reid or anybody. But I think I’d be able to get along very well with Nancy Pelosi and just about everybody. Hey, look, I think I’ll be able to get along well with Chuck Schumer. I was always very good with Schumer. I was close to Schumer in many ways.”

Since Trump began his presidential run, Reid has slammed many of the real-estate mogul’s statements on topics like immigration and Muslims from the Senate floor.

Today, Reid noted, “We’ve gotten along fine.”

Gowdy: ‘Eye-Opening’ Benghazi Report Coming ‘Sooner Rather Than Later’ By Debra Heine

Congressman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) said on The Hugh Hewitt Show Monday that the Select Committee on Benghazi will be issuing a report “sooner rather than later” and predicted that the part of the report that people will find “the most eye-opening” deals with how military assets were positioned on the night of the attacks, and why they sat idle “for hours and hours and hours.”

The investigation has been organized around what Chairman Gowdy calls the “three tranches”: What happened before, during, and after the Benghazi attacks.

Why was security at the Benghazi diplomatic and CIA compounds inadequate? Why did the U.S. military fail to respond? And why did the administration initially describe the attack as a spontaneous demonstration over a YouTube video, rather than a pre-planned terrorist attack?

Gowdy told Hewitt that people will be most surprised by what the committee discovered regarding what happened during the attacks, and noted that those findings were somehow missed by the other committees. Asked if he had yet seen “13 Hours,” the movie about Benghazi currently in theaters, Gowdy answered that he had not.

“We have one more book author to interview, and I realize I’m old-fashioned, and a lot of people could see the movie and still do a fair job of questioning one of the book authors. But it is important to me that I have his testimony in mind as opposed to what I may have seen in a movie theater,” Gowdy explained.

Clinton Regrets ‘Uproar and Commotion’ Over Her Insecure Email System By Debra Heine

Hillary Clinton’s email excuses fell apart under public scrutiny many months ago, but that hasn’t stopped her from repeating the same failed excuses over and over again on the campaign trail. When asked to explain her ever-changing email story during an editorial board interview with the Quad-City Times in Iowa yesterday, she floundered badly.

One of the board members reminded her that last summer, she described her decision to use a private, insecure email system while secretary of state as “an error in judgment,” but on Monday during CNN’s town hall, she refused to call her home-brew server an “error in judgment” because [as she claims] she did nothing wrong.

Hillary’s answer was pretty stunning: “Well — you know — look, I just think it was a mistake because it’s caused all this uproar and commotion.”

In other words, the reason her unique email arrangement was a mistake is not that she mishandled classified information (making it easier to hack into, possibly even exposing intelligence assets on the ground) but because it got her in trouble.

Senator Once Aided by Palin Now Campaigning for Anybody But Trump By Bridget Johnson

Sarah Palin rallied for Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) in his 2014 quest for Congress.

Now, the freshman senator has pledged to do everything he can to ensure that Palin’s pick for the GOP presidential nomination is defeated.

Sasse is campaigning with both of his upper chamber colleagues, Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas), in the hope that one of them can defeat The Donald.

The Nebraska senator told MSNBC this morning that he’s campaigning against Trump because “I’m pro-Constitution and I want to make America great again.”

“And the best way to do that is by uniting around the things that bring us together and that’s not one guy’s ego, that’s a system of laws and limited government,” Sasse said. “So if being pro-Constitution makes me anti-Mr. Trump, I think that’s his problem.”

“The guy talks constantly about how he’ll get everything done alone. He said recently that if he’s elected president he’ll be able to do whatever he wants. That’s pretty much what the American Revolution was about. We already have one party in this country that’s gone post-constitutional. We don’t need another one.”

David Goldman:No Prosperity for Iran After Nuclear Deal

As a matter of arithmetic, Iran is flat broke at the prevailing price of hydrocarbons. Under the P5+1 nuclear deal, Iran will recoup somewhere between $55 and $150 billion of frozen assets, depending on whether one believes the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury or one’s own eyes. The windfall is barely enough to tide Iran over for the next two years.

P5+1 nuclear diplomacy with Iran went forward on the premise that Iran would trade its strategic ambitions in the region for economic prosperity. The trouble is that prosperity is not a realistic outcome for Iran, which has nothing to gain by abandoning its strategic adventures.

Iran now exports 1.2 million barrels a day of oil. At $30 a barrel, that’s $14 billion year (and perhaps a bit more, given that some Iranian light crude goes at a higher price). Iran also sold (as of 2014) about 9.6 billion cubic meters of natural gas, which might bring in another $4 billion at today’s market prices.

As of 2014, the Iranian government spent $63 billion a year, according to Western estimates. No data is available for 2015, and the Iran Central Bank doesn’t publish data past mid-2013. That brought in a bit over $40 billion a year (not counting gas exports). Iran has a $40 billion hole to fill. Unfrozen assets will tide the country over for a couple of years, but won’t solve its problems. This year Iran plans to spend $89 billion, the government announced Dec. 22.

David Archibald China’s Hunger for Conflict

The Middle Kingdom’s economy is slipping and, if things go from bad to much worse, the Beijing elite’s grip on power with it. What better way to distract and unite a restive populace than a showdown with the rest of the world?
So Australia is considering performing its own freedom-of-navigation exercise in the South China Sea. That’s good. Things are coming to a head and this will let everyone know which side we are on, and, indeed, that we have taken sides. For maximum effect what the RAN should do is visit the Sierra Madre on Second Thomas Shoal in the Spratlys. This is a World War 2 tank-landing ship that the Philippine Navy ran up on the reef in 1999. It is manned by a dozen Filipino marines. As a Filipino naval asset, an attack by China on the Sierra Madre would trigger the US-Philippines Defense Treaty. China keeps two of its coast guard vessels circling the reef in an attempt to stop resupply of the base. The Philippines has resorted to air-dropping supplies to the Sierra Madre. This has been going on for a few years now and apparently China is somewhat miffed that the Philippines hasn’t given up yet. An Australian visit to the Sierra Madre would be much appreciated.

We needn’t be concerned about the possible effect on trade. The prices of the commodities we send to China have fallen to near what our operating costs are, so we aren’t making much of a profit anymore. In effect we are digging up a lot of dirt as a sort of public service, in this case for the benefit of ingrates who are planning to dominate and subjugate the East Asian region. This has been coming for a long time. Consider the following map which is from a Nationalist primary school textbook from 1938:

Swedish army prepares for war as police flee mob of Muslim ‘migrants’ By Carol Brown

According to an internal military document, the Swedish army is preparing for war. Per a Breitbart report, “the chief of the Swedish army General Anders Brännström told men under his command they could expect to be fighting a war in Europe against skilled opponents ‘within a few years’.”

The 28-page document was directed to soldiers, civil servants, politicians, and guests who will be attending next week’s military demonstrations that will focus on the army’s ability to fight and survive a winter war.

…the General said the deteriorating security picture in Europe was the main factor behind his warning, indicating the Islamic State conducting military campaigns in Europe and spreading instability from the Ukraine could lead to conflict. Sensationally, he suggested a Third World War was just round the corner. He told the paper:

“One can draw parallels with the 1930s. A great uncertainty and [political] dynamics which then led to a great war. That time we managed to keep out. But it is not at all certain we could succeed this time”. (snip)

Russian Influence Grows In Latin America By Derek DeLuca

The symbolic gesture of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ‘resetting’ relations with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in March 2009 has been engrained in the minds of most people.

With the push of a button, all would be made right between the United States and the Russian Federation. Well, not exactly.

Russia’s forays into Georgia, Ukraine, and Syria are all well-documented. However, Russia is on the rise elsewhere and it’s not where you might think. Russian influence, under President Vladimir Putin, is growing in Latin America and it concerns the United States.

Daniel Wiser of the Washington Free Beacon suggests that Russia’s expansion into Latin America, including Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and, of course, Cuba, is due to President Obama’s negligence in the United States’ own backyard.

As the United States pulls economic, and military resources out of the Americas, Putin sees the chance to once again take advantage of American weakness abroad.

Putin has established strong relations with the nations of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), an intergovernmental organization established by former Venezuelan dictator, Hugo Chavez. The organization was created in opposition to the United States-backed Free Trade Area for the Americas, which has been seen by many Latin American and Caribbean countries as a form of American imperialism.

“Harry and Arthur: Truman, Vandenberg and the Partnership That Created the Free World” by Lawrence J. Haas A Review and Interview of the Author by Ruth King

Arthur H. Vandenberg (1884-1951) was a respected Republican Senator from Michigan from 1928 to 1951. In 1945 he was the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Harry Truman, formerly a Democratic Senator from Missouri, became Vice President of the United States when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected to a fourth term in 1944.

In the Prologue to his original and meticulously researched book, “Harry and Arthur: Truman, Vandenberg and the Partnership That Created the Free World,” author Lawrence J. Haas describes the world to which they awoke on April 12, 1945 – the day that FDR died.

World War 11 was approaching its end in Europe as U.S. and Soviet armies swept towards victory. The Nazi regime was collapsing, and in its wake were 40 million dead; millions of displaced survivors; and devastation, starvation, disease, homelessness, and dislocation for those who survived.

Furthermore, the Soviets and their puppet Communist allies throughout Eastern Europe were exploiting the chaos in the hopes of expanding the Soviet empire across Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East.

The accidental President, who was never Roosevelt’s top choice for Vice President to begin with, and Arthur Vandenberg, who had been an isolationist and harsh critic of Roosevelt, his New Deal, and his tilt toward Great Britain before the war, formed an unlikely partnership to forge a revolutionary new American foreign policy in response to the new challenges.

As Lawrence Haas writes:

“Under their leadership from the spring of 1945 to the summer of 1949, the United States would spearhead the birth of a United Nations…; pledge through the Truman Doctrine to defend freedom from Communist threat virtually anywhere in the world; rescue Western Europe’s economy from the devastation of war through the Marshall Plan, and commit itself through the North Atlantic Treaty (which established NATO) to defend Western Europe if the Soviets attacked.”

Their collaboration started with a simple message to a beleaguered Harry Truman in his earliest days on the job. Despite his misgivings, Vandenberg, a prominent and forceful Senator, wrote to the new President: “Good luck and God bless you. Let me help you whenever I can. America marches on.”

The Humbling of the West Europe and the U.S. bow and scrape to ascendant Iran. Daniel Henninger

Some wonder how history will treat Barack Obama’s presidency. That depends on who writes the histories.

Secretary of State John Kerry’s account will fist-pump the Iran nuclear deal as the central foreign-policy event of the Obama presidency, a triumph for Western diplomacy.

But news photographs in recent weeks are producing a different history. These photos document the abject humiliation of the West by Iran. Americans who plan to vote in their presidential election should look hard at these photos, because the West’s direction after this will turn on the decisions they make.
The first photo is of a hallway in Rome’s Capitoline Museums, a repository of art dating to Western antiquity. Out of what the government of Italy called “respect” for the sensibilities of visiting Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, the museum placed large white boxes over several nude sculptures, including a Venus created in the second century B.C.

Then, because Mr. Rouhani will not attend a meal that serves alcohol to anyone, the nominally Italian government of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi declined to serve wine.

They did so for the same reason that beggars grub change in front of Rome’s churches. Freed by the Obama nuclear deal with Iran, Italy’s tin-cup businesses signed about a dozen deals with Mr. Rouhani this week, totaling $18 billion.