Displaying the most recent of 91383 posts written by

Ruth King

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

What is Really Uniting the Palestinians? by Bassam Tawil

By on October 15th, 2017

Saleh Arouri and Hamas view the “reconciliation” agreement as Fatah moving closer to Hamas and not the other way around….The “reconciliation” agreement requires from Hamas only to dissolve its shadow government in the Gaza Strip. Hamas is not being asked to recognize Israel’s right to exist, or renounce terrorism or lay down its arms. Hamas is not being asked to change its anti-Semitic charter, which openly calls for the elimination not only of Israel but of Jews: “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.” (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem). (Hamas Charter, Article 7)

The “reconciliation” agreement is clearly a Fatah submission to Hamas and not vice versa. In his accord with Hamas, Abbas has signed onto Hamas’s version of violent “resistance” against Israel and Jews. This is the real meaning of this Abbas-Hamas deal.

Buoyed by the “reconciliation” agreement reached with President Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority (PA), Hamas has announced that it seeks to unite all Palestinians in the fight against the “Zionist enterprise.” In other words, Hamas views the agreement as a vehicle for rallying Palestinians behind it toward achieving its longtime goal of destroying Israel.

When Hamas talks about the “Zionist enterprise,” it is referring to the establishment of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people. Hamas is not only opposed to the existence of Israel on what it and most Muslims perceive as “Muslim-owned” land; it reiterates, at every opportunity, its desire to annihilate Israel.

Those who think that the new “reconciliation” accord will have a moderating effect of Hamas are both blind and deaf to what Hamas itself has been stating both before and after the agreement. One has to give Hamas credit for being clear, honest and consistent about its goal of destroying Israel.

Hours after the latest agreement was signed in Cairo, Saleh Arouri, the newly elected deputy chairman of Hamas’s “political bureau,” stated that his movement’s next step was to work toward uniting all Palestinians against the “Zionist enterprise.”

According to Arouri — an arch-terrorist wanted by Israel for his role in funding and orchestrating terrorism — pursuing the fight against Israel should be the number one priority of all Palestinians, especially in light of the “reconciliation” deal with Abbas and the Palestinian Authority. The well-being of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is the very farthest thing from the minds of Hamas and its new partner, the PA.

Arouri, who shuttles between a number of Arab and Islamic countries, does not live in the Gaza Strip. As such, he is not faced with the power outages, lack of medical supplies, and ill-equipped hospitals dealt with on a daily basis by most Palestinians there. Why should he care about the plight of his people when he can afford to stay in five-star hotels in Lebanon, Egypt and other countries?

“We are hoping that we will be able to reach agreement with our brothers in Fatah [Abbas’s ruling faction] and other Palestinian factions on a comprehensive national strategy to confront the Zionist enterprise,” Arouri said in an interview with the Palestinian daily Al-Quds. “It’s not hard for us to find a formula that would bring all factions together. We believe that confronting the Zionist enterprise, with all means, is not only a right, but also the duty of all of us. This does not contravene international law.”

Translation: Arouri, like most Hamas leaders, sees the “reconciliation” accord as an opportunity to advance Hamas’s genocidal agenda against Israel and Jews. He believes that the new partnership with Abbas’s Fatah should incentivize all other Palestinian factions to join forces in the fight against Israel.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

“Our Lives Have Turned into Hell” Muslim Persecution of Christians, May 2017 by Raymond Ibrahim

By on October 15th, 2017

Long touted as a beacon of Muslim tolerance and moderation, Indonesia joined other repressive Muslim nations in May when it sentenced the Christian governor of Jakarta, known as “Ahok,” to a two-year prison term on the charge that he committed “blasphemy” against Islam.

The blasphemy accusation is based on a video that Ahok made, in which he told voters that they were being deceived if they believed that Koran 5:51, as his opposition said, requires Muslims not to vote for a non-Muslim when there are Muslim candidates available. The Koran passage states: “O you who have believed, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies. They are allies of one another. And whoever is an ally to them among you — then indeed, he is one of them.”

“Morocco’s 2011 constitution allows for freedom of religion. The authorities claim to practice only a moderate form of Islam that leaves room for religious tolerance. Yet, in reality, Moroccan Christians still suffer from persecution.” Mustafa said: “I was shunned at work. My children were bullied at school.”

One month after Islamic militants bombed two Egyptian churches during Palm Sunday and killed nearly 50 people in April 2017, several SUVs, on May 26, stopped two buses transporting dozens of Christians to the ancient Coptic Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor in the desert south of Cairo. According to initial reports, approximately ten Islamic militants, heavily armed and dressed in military fatigues, “demanded that the passengers recite the Muslim profession of faith” — which is tantamount to converting to Islam. When they refused, the jihadis opened fire on them, killing 29 Christians, at least ten of whom were young children. Two girls were aged 2 and 4. Also killed was Mohsen Morkous, an American citizen described as “a simple man” whom “everyone loved,” his two sons, and his two grandsons.

According to eyewitness accounts, the terrorists ordered the passengers to exit the bus in groups:

“As each pilgrim came off the bus they were asked to renounce their Christian faith and profess belief in Islam, but all of them—even the children—refused. Each was killed in cold blood with a gunshot to the head or the throat.

“By the time they killed half of the people, the terrorists saw cars coming in the distance and we think that that is what saved the rest,” said one source. “They did not have time to kill them all. They just shot at them randomly and then fled.”

According to another report:

“The dead and dying lay in the desert sand amid Islamic leaflets left by the assailants extoling the virtues of fasting during Ramadan and forgiveness granted to those who abstain from eating during the Islamic ritual. Ramadan … is often seen as the worst time for persecution of Christians who live in the Middle East.”

A video of the immediate aftermath “showed at least four or five bodies of adult men lying on the desert sand next to the bus; women and other men screamed and cried as they stood or squatted next to the bodies.” According to a man who spoke to hospitalized relatives, “authorities took somewhere from two to three hours to arrive at the scene.” The man “questioned whether his uncle and others might have lived had the response been quicker.”

The attack occurred in the middle of a three-month state of emergency that began 47 days earlier, on Sunday, April 9, when twin attacks on Coptic Christian churches left some 49 Christians slaughtered. The December before that, 29 other Christians were killed during another set of twin attacks on churches. Both before and after the monastery attack, dozens of Christians, mostly in Sinai, but some in Egypt proper, were killed in cold blood, often decapitated or burned alive. According to a May 9 report, “A [Christian] father and his two sons were recently kidnapped by ISIS and their bodies were finally found over the weekend.”

Continue reading →
ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Environmental Group Sues Trump Administration Over Walruses By Arnold Carreiro

By on October 15th, 2017

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service regularly considers adding animals that are considered to be especially vulnerable to extinction to the endangered species list, and many ecologists are upset that 25 American creatures, particularly the Pacific walrus, didn’t make the cut this year.

According to the USFWS, giving these animals the additional protections of being an endangered species “is not warranted at this time.” The USFWS explained its decision regarding the stability of the walrus population in a press release:

While walruses use sea ice for a variety of activities, including breeding, birthing, resting, and avoiding predators, they have shown an ability to adapt to sea ice loss that was not foreseen when the Service last assessed the species in 2011. Our decision not to list the Pacific walrus under the Endangered Species Act at this time is based on a rigorous evaluation of the best available science, which indicates the population appears stable, and the species has demonstrated an ability to adapt to changing conditions. If future circumstances warrant or new information comes to light, we can and will re-evaluate the Pacific walrus for ESA protection.

There are actually two subspecies of walrus. The Atlantic walrus is found throughout the shorelines of Greenland and northeastern Canada, and the Pacific walrus resides in the icy waters along Alaska and Russia. Walruses can weigh up to 1.5 tons, are protected from the frigid cold of the Arctic region with a thick layer of blubber, and survive on a diverse carnivorous diet of clams, shrimp, crabs, sea cucumbers, and other marine invertebrates. A walrus uses its famous ivory tusks as ice hooks to pull itself out of the water, and as defensive tools against the mammoth marine mammal’s only two natural predators: polar bears and killer whales.

America’s walruses are already protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which prohibits the harvest, import, and export of the Pacific walrus or walrus products, although there are special exceptions for Alaska natives, who are allowed to hunt walruses for food and carve items from their tusks. They were pushed to be placed on the endangered species list during the Obama administration, but other threatened animals were of higher priority at the time, and walruses were placed on a list for future consideration. Regardless of the scientific findings of how the walrus population is both adaptable and beginning to stabilize, environmentalists are furious with this decision.

For instance, Noah Greenwald, the endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity, has strong feelings about the future of our native walruses: “This is a truly dark day for America’s imperiled wildlife. You couldn’t ask for a clearer sign that the Trump administration puts corporate profits ahead of protecting endangered species. The Pacific walrus, Florida Keys mole skink, eastern boreal toad and 22 other species are now one step closer to extinction. We’re going to challenge as many of these bogus findings as we can.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Popcorn time: Feminists and Women’s March leftists yell at each other over Bernie Sanders, Maxine Waters By Monica Showalter

By on October 15th, 2017

The Women’s March is throwing the Women’s Convention featuring Bernie Sanders and other feminists aren’t happy about it.

Seems the flashier new group, which made a name for itself by marching against President Trump’s inauguration in pink “pussy” knit caps, has annoyed the more garden-variety feminists by choosing a man to headline the group’s next big event, upseting the delicate identity-politics political eco-system.

Daily Caller reports:

Progressives came out in full force Thursday to denounce Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders as the headlining speaker at a convention organized by the Women’s March.

Feminists and their organizations blasted the Women’s Convention, a three-day event aimed a female liberation, for having Sanders speak on the opening night of the convention. Some women took to Twitter to voice their frustrations, while others rallied behind a petition calling for the immediate removal of Sanders.

After all, who more logical to speak for women at a Women’s Convention than a man? And not just any man, but one who published an essay on women’s “rape fantasies” with multiple men during his days as a leftist radical in 1972. You can see the idiocy of this peculiar choice for a Women’s Convention. It only make sense when one recognizes the Women’s March is better titled the Ladies Auxiliary March for leftist politicians.

That’s not to say the other side is not equally idiotic. The Women’s March organizers are snapping right back at their more conventional feminist sisters by arguing that Rep. Maxine Waters of California will be the official keynote speaker, not the featured speaker, as Bernie Sanders will be.

Organizer Tamika Mallory also pointed out that while Sanders may address the women the first night, Rep. Maxine Waters is the convention’s keynote speaker. The outrage over Sanders only serves to erase the work of black women, Mallory added.

“To the folks yelling at @womensmarch & directly at me: Why does your version of advocating for women’s rights = bashing Black women leaders?” Mallory tweeted.

So, to complain about Bernie is to demean Maxine Waters? Guess there really were women who voted for Hillary Clinton solely because she was a woman.

The left has such fascinating logic. These people will be yelling and backbiting for years abouot this. They deserve each other.

The rest of us should break out the popcorn.

The Women’s March is throwing the Women’s Convention featuring Bernie Sanders and other feminists aren’t happy about it.

Seems the flashier new group, which made a name for itself by marching against President Trump’s inauguration in pink “pussy” knit caps, has annoyed the more garden-variety feminists by choosing a man to headline the group’s next big event, upseting the delicate identity-politics political eco-system.

Daily Caller reports:

Progressives came out in full force Thursday to denounce Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders as the headlining speaker at a convention organized by the Women’s March.

Feminists and their organizations blasted the Women’s Convention, a three-day event aimed a female liberation, for having Sanders speak on the opening night of the convention. Some women took to Twitter to voice their frustrations, while others rallied behind a petition calling for the immediate removal of Sanders.

After all, who more logical to speak for women at a Women’s Convention than a man? And not just any man, but one who published an essay on women’s “rape fantasies” with multiple men during his days as a leftist radical in 1972. You can see the idiocy of this peculiar choice for a Women’s Convention. It only make sense when one recognizes the Women’s March is better titled the Ladies Auxiliary March for leftist politicians.

That’s not to say the other side is not equally idiotic. The Women’s March organizers are snapping right back at their more conventional feminist sisters by arguing that Rep. Maxine Waters of California will be the official keynote speaker, not the featured speaker, as Bernie Sanders will be.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Palestinian Reconciliation: To What End? By Shoshana Bryen

By on October 15th, 2017

After weeks of Egyptian-sponsored pre-talks, and a very short “cabinet meeting” in Gaza, “formal reconciliation talks” are now being held between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (P.A. or Fatah) in Cairo under the direct auspices of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

For some Middle East-watchers, the talks are a form of progress. There are presently three functional governments between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and this is about getting rid of one of them. Progress here is that Israel is not the government they’re talking about getting rid of. Yet. This is about whether Hamas or Fatah will lead the Palestinians – whether to peace with Israel or to war with Israel is less important for them right now than simply who between them is top dog.

The factions are “optimistic,” according to Palestinian sources in Cairo. To the extent they are, Israel and the West should be worried, because what they agree on is that Jewish sovereignty is illegitimate. What they don’t agree on is who gets the bigger army. Scylla here is an 83-year-old despotic kleptocrat whose administration has impoverished and radicalized the people of the West Bank while begging protection from Israel against Charybdis – a terror organization that has impoverished and radicalized the people of Gaza.

Most of the world – the United States included – simply assumes that the legitimate party is Fatah. Hamas assumes no such thing. In the last Palestinian election (2006 if you’re counting), Hamas won 76 of the 132 legislative seats; Fatah won 43. Hamas should have been allowed to form the cabinet, but the legislature was never seated – in part because Israel and the United States didn’t want Hamas in the government any more than Fatah did. But it was, in fact, the result of the last thing that passed for a general election. The short, brutal civil war came in 2007. Mahmoud Abbas’s term as president expired in 2009.

Hamas claims that it will turn the civil administration over to Fatah but insists that it will hold on to its army (25,000 fighters of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam brigades) in what it calls a “Lebanon solution,” a private militia outside the government. Hamas leader Ismayil Haniyeh told Egyptian television, “There are two groups of weapons. There are the weapons of the government, the police and security services[.] … And there are the weapons of resistance. Regarding the weapons of the resistance, as long as there is a Zionist occupation on Palestinian land, it is the right of the Palestinian people to possess weapons and resist the occupation in all of forms of resistance.”

P.A. president Mahmoud Abbas firmly rejected the Hamas proposal. “I will not accept or copy or reproduce the Hezb’allah example in Lebanon. Everything must be in the hands of the Palestinian Authority.” His great fear is Hamas demanding that security cooperation between Fatah and the IDF, which protects the P.A., cease – leaving the field clear for a Hamas military takeover on the West Bank. That is Israel’s nightmare as well.

Continue reading →
MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Professor Marston and the Wonder Women – A Review By Marilyn Penn

By on October 15th, 2017

Purporting to be a biopic of the unconventional Dr. William Moulton Marston, professor of psychology at Radcliffe, inventor of the lie detector, polygamous husband, afficionado of bondage and creator of Wonder Woman, this movie would seem to have all its bases loaded for box office success Add to this the photogenic quality of the cast – Luke Evans, Rebecca Hall and Bella Heathcote – stunners who don’t age a minute during a 20 year time span – and you can only scratch your head at how seriously this movie loses its mark.

The first problem is a confusing script that doesn’t clarify the time frame of the ongoing investigation of Professor Marston’s comic book and its suitability for young readers. It appears to be simultaneous with his professorial career but we find out later that it only began after he was fired from that position. The second is our incredulity at how the professor, his wife and their considerably younger lover, three very intelligent people, ever imagined that they would fit seamlessly into a conventional 40’s suburban family community. After their involvement with sado-masochistic bondage is discovered by a shocked neighbor, they become personae non grata and the threesome dissolves for “the good of the children” with two mothers and one father. How the children react to their parents’ open self-indulgence never makes it to the screen but we have witnessed the three adults in the family bed at a time when such behavior was not considered normal so presumably there was some fallout for the younger generation. It’s also never clear how an unemployed professor and a wife working as a secretary are supporting all of them prior to Wonder Woman’s success Knowing what we do about how little the creators of other comics earned, it’s still not clear what kept them going.

What begins as a look at a serious academic, his brilliant wife and an intuitive student whose mother was a leading suffragist and Margaret Sanger’s sister, intermittently turns into a Hollywood production with a pop vocal score reminiscent of a Bobby Darin movie. The bondage scenes are more embarrassing than erotic as is the attempt to justify Wonder Woman’s scanty costume , frequent entanglements with a rope and talented handcuffs as symbols of power for young American girls. The cast is compromised by the silliness of too much of this and alternatively, the ludicrous grandiosity of what Wonder Woman is meant to represent. We are left with a portrait of a charismatic man who finagled two women into a lifelong relationship that served him well and outlasted him for a long time after his death. But given the temper of today’s times, where is the authorial cynicism concerning the imbalance of power when a professor convinces his student to have sex with him and his wife? And where is the obvious question about how much his “philosophy” conveniently allowed the manipulation of a girl who had been raised by Catholic nuns and a wife reduced to sitting on a window-sill at her husband’s lectures?

The story of the professor is a fascinating one but given the fact that he was a psychologist, the film’s subject and audience merit at least a modicum of skepticism concerning his motivation and rationalization of submission to bondage. Though Wonder Woman eventually morphed into a fighter for truth and justice, she seems to have begun as a controlling man’s sexual fantasies come true.

Continue reading →
FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trump’s Iran speech finally sets facts of sham nuclear deal straight By Claudia Rosett,

By on October 15th, 2017

President Trump has not yet pulled America out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. But he just took a vital step toward doing so, in a landmark speech on Friday that in plain language dismantled the dangerous fictions on which the deal was built.

Chief among these fictions is the notion that a nuclear program in the hands of Iran’s predatory, terror-sponsoring Islamist regime could ever be “exclusively peaceful.” This was a phrase repeated endlessly by President Obama’s diplomatic team during the negotiating of the Iran nuclear deal, and it is enshrined in the final text, as if saying could make it so.
Iran has already given the lie to this fantasy, most prominently by continuing to test ballistic missiles. These are delivery vehicles that are only likely to be of use if Iran employs its “exclusively peaceful” nuclear program as cover to acquire nuclear warheads.

Citing the case of Iran’s longtime partner in missile proliferation, North Korea, Trump warned that it is folly to downplay Iran’s ambitions: “As we have seen in North Korea, the longer we ignore a threat, the more dangerous that threat becomes.”

Ensuring that Washington will now pay attention, Trump announced in his speech that he will not recertify that Iran is in compliance with the agreement. Under the Corker-Cardin law, passed in 2015 and officially dubbed the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, this decertification kicks the problem to Congress, where lawmakers will have 60 days to come up with solutions.

It should help focus their minds that Trump stipulated: “In the event we are not able to reach a solution working with Congress and our allies, then the agreement will be terminated.” He noted that, as president, it is his prerogative to cancel America’s participation in this deal “at any time.”

Pulling America out of the deal would be the best course by far, and that is where any honest debate ought to end up. This signature foreign-policy agreement of President Obama, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, is a bargain so flawed that there is realistically no way to fix it. Haggled out with Iran by six world powers — Russia, China, France, Britain, Germany and the U.S. under Obama (in this instance leading from in front) — the JCPOA is thick with complexities that obscure the basic tradeoffs with which Obama enticed Iran to agree to this deal.

But there’s a simple bottom line. President Obama promised that on his watch Iran would not get nuclear weapons. Obama achieved this by cutting a deal that effectively paid off Iran upfront to delay a nuclear breakout until after he left office. He did this at the cost of greatly fortifying Iran’s predatory, Islamist regime, without ending its nuclear program. That is what Trump has inherited. As he accurately summed it up: “We got weak inspections in exchange for no more than a purely short-term and temporary delay in Iran’s path to nuclear weapons.”

The terms of this deal virtually ensure an Iranian nuclear breakout, on a scale and with a reach that will be even more dangerous when it comes. Without requiring any change in the nature of Iran’s terror-sponsoring regime, the deal dignified Tehran on the world stage, greatly eased global sanctions, allowed Iran access to more than $100 billion in frozen oil revenues, and topped that off with the related settlement from the U.S. of $1.7 billion, shipped secretly to Iran in cash.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Betsy McCaughey Trump strikes a blow for health-care freedom

By on October 15th, 2017

Free at last! That’s the message for millions who don’t get health coverage at work and, until now, faced two dismal options: going without insurance or paying Obama­Care’s soaring premiums. On Thursday, President Trump announced changes that will allow consumers to choose coverage options costing half of what ObamaCare’s cheapest bronze plans cost.

Democrats are already accusing the president of kneecapping ObamaCare, but these changes will reduce the number of uninsured — something Democrats claim is their goal.

The Affordable Care Act requires everyone to buy the one-size-fits-all package. You have to pay for maternity care, even if you’re too old to give birth. You’re also on the hook for pediatric dental care, even if you’re childless. It’s like passing a law that the only car you can buy is a fully loaded, four-door sedan. No more hatchbacks or two-seaters.

Trump’s taking the opposite approach, allowing consumers choice. His new regulation will free people to again buy “short-term” health plans that exclude many costly services, such as inpatient drug rehab. These plans aren’t guaranteed to be renewable year to year; the upside is they cost much less.

Short-term plans have been around for years. But after ObamaCare premiums began soaring, these plans became very attractive to people who were ineligible for an ObamaCare subsidy and balked at paying full freight.

Hundreds of thousands of customers signed up for them — until the Obama administration slammed the door shut. A year ago, President Barack Obama slapped a 90-day limit on the plans, as a way to force people into ObamaCare no matter how unaffordable.

Trump is removing Obama’s 90-day limit, reopening that low-cost option. That’s good news for 8 million people currently getting whacked with an ObamaCare tax penalty for not having insurance, and another 11 million uninsured who avoided the penalty by pleading hardship. Count on many of them to buy coverage when they have an affordable option. That will reduce the number of uninsured.

Yet Democrats are ranting that Trump’s regulatory changes are sabotaging the Affordable Care Act. They warn that healthy people will abandon the ObamaCare exchanges to buy these lower-cost plans, destabilizing the system. It’s a wild overstatement.

Continue reading →
FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trump Decertifies By The Editors

By on October 14th, 2017

Donald Trump is decertifying the Iran deal, and gave a tough-minded speech announcing his decision.

We have opposed the Iran deal from the beginning. Building on the North Korean model of negotiations, Tehran engaged in a years-long dialogue with the West over the question of whether it would have a nuclear program, all the while developing its nuclear program. The upshot of the agreement was that we accepted Iran’s becoming a threshold nuclear power and showered it with sanctions relief — including, literally, a plane-full of cash — for the privilege.

Since the deal left the rest of Iran’s objectionable and threatening behavior untouched, the regime was free to invest proceeds from its economic windfall into its ballistic-missile program and its agenda of military expansion across the region. The Obama administration hoped that the agreement would moderate Iran’s behavior, but, predictably, it has emboldened it. Giving more resources to a terror state has never reduced terror. Couple these failings with a weak inspection regime and key sunset clauses, and the deal is nearly as historically bad as President Trump says in his characteristically over-the-top style.

We would prefer that the U.S. pull out of the deal, reimpose the sanctions that had begun to bite the regime prior to the agreement, and force Europeans eager to do business with Iran to choose between us and them. The goal would be to bring the regime to its knees and, short of that, force it to rip up its nuclear program.

The Trump administration isn’t willing to go this far, at least not yet. President Trump will refuse to certify every 90 days that the deal is in the vital security interests of the U.S. — an obvious fiction — and seek to get Congress to pass a series of “triggers” further sanctioning Iran if it doesn’t meet various new standards under the deal. This is a halfway approach that reflects the White House’s divisions (Trump wants to get all the way out of the deal, but most of his national-security principals don’t), the enormous diplomatic task pulling out would represent (Iran would join North Korea as an urgent, dominating foreign-policy issue), and perhaps internal doubts about what the administration is capable of pulling off (sometimes it has merely been struggling for coherence on foreign policy).

If Congress did indeed pass additional Iran sanctions it might be a way, in effect, to toughen the Iran deal unilaterally. The Europeans would probably be willing to go along in the interests of saving the overall agreement, and Iran probably prefers to be inside the deal rather than out, for the reasons noted above. But it will take 60 votes for the Senate pass anything, and President Trump may soon confront the decision whether he really wants to stay in or not.

Trump’s speech, appropriately, addressed much more than the nuclear deal. In frank terms, he made the case against the terroristic theocracy in Tehran and described its threat to the U.S. and the region. He sketched in outline a strategy to pressure the regime on all fronts, especially focusing on the nefarious role of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. All of this was to the good, although much will depend on execution; the administration doesn’t yet have a strategy to check Iran’s growing clout in Syria, and we must remember that the regime has the ability to hit back against us, both in Syria and in Iraq.

But Trump’s speech was a welcome dose of realism after eight years of willful naïveté about our enemy in Tehran. If nothing else, we have a president who doesn’t see the regime through a film of delusion — finally.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump Faithfully Executes Obamacare; Media, Democrats Go Nuts The law is unraveling on its own terms. By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on October 14th, 2017

Why don’t the stories say: “President Trump Faithfully Executes Affordable Care Act”?

In report after sky-is-falling report, the journalism wing of the media-Democrat complex castigates the president over his decision to — as the New York Times put it — “scrap subsidies to health insurance companies that help pay out of pocket costs of low-income people.” These subsidy payments are “critical” to sustaining the “Affordable Care Act.” Without them, the Grey Lady frets, “President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement” could “unravel.” To add insult to injury, the paper implies that Trump’s “determination to dismantle [Obamacare] on his own” is a malign attack on the rule of law, coming only after Republicans reneged on their vow to repeal it by legislation.

It’s ironic. Notwithstanding the many outrageous, mendacious things the president says and tweets, the press is aghast that his “fake news” tropes against mainstream-media stalwarts resonate with much of the country. Well, if you want to know why, this latest Obamacare coverage is why. What Trump has actually done is end the illegal payoffs without which insurance companies have no rational choice but to jack up premiums or flee the Obamacare exchanges. The culprits here are the charlatans who gave us Obamacare. To portray Trump as the bad guy is not merely fake news. It’s an out-and-out lie.

Which is to say: It’s about as honest as the Democrats’ labeling of Obamacare as the Affordable Care Act.

The subsidy payments to insurance companies may be “critical” to sustaining the ACA, but they are not provided for in the ACA. The Obamacare law did not appropriate them. No legislation appropriates them. They are and have always been illegal. In essence, we are back to the question we asked a couple of weeks ago in connection with Trump’s then-anticipated decertification of Obama’s Iran Nuclear Deal: It is not whether the president should take this action; it is why he failed to take it before now.

Under the Constitution, no funds may be paid out of the treasury unless they have been appropriated by Congress. It is not enough for lawmakers to authorize a government program or action. The House and Senate must follow through with a statute that directs payment for the program or action. Standing alone, authorization is just aspiration; it does not imply appropriation. Congress authorizes a lot of things, but only the things for which Congress approves the disbursal of public money are permitted to happen.

The Affordable Care Act, so-called, was passed by the then-Democrat-controlled Congress and signed into law by President Obama in 2010. It established health-insurance markets known as the Obamacare “exchanges.” In the exchanges, people whose household income falls between 100 and 400 percent of the poverty level qualify for two kinds of financial assistance.

The first is a tax credit to reduce insurance premiums, authorized under ACA Section 1401. The ACA supports these premium reductions with a permanent appropriation — i.e., the appropriation is built into the law; Congress need neither appropriate funds in a separate statute nor renew the funds annually.

The second form of financial assistance on the exchanges is reduction in “cost-sharing,” under ACA Section 1402. “Cost-sharing” is made up of “deductibles, coinsurance, copayments, or similar charges.” Unlike the premium reductions, the cost-sharing reductions are not accomplished by tax credits. Instead, insurance companies are required to reduce what they would otherwise charge.

Why would insurance companies do that? Largely because they are supposed to get paid back. Section 1402 authorizes the secretary of health and human services to reimburse the insurance companies the amount of these reductions — i.e., it sets up an arrangement whereby the companies can be made whole by shifting the cost to taxpayers. But there is no appropriation for this arrangement. If Congress wants to permit reimbursement, it must appropriate funds in a separate statute — such as an annual appropriations act.

ACA enthusiasts insist that these two provisions are obviously intended to go hand-in-hand: Were the insurance companies not reimbursed, their cost-sharing losses would so outstrip what they reap from Obamacare (which forces people to buy their product) that they would abandon the exchanges — which could rupture the ACA structure.

Continue reading →