RUTHFULLY YOURS

While hyperventilating pundits wet their pants commenting on the “historic!” meeting and handshake [1] between President Obama and Cuban dictator Raul Castro in Panama City during the Summit of the America’s this weekend, one veteran “diplomat” just laughs.

“The so-called re-establishment of relations (between the U.S. and Cuba) is really no big deal, “laughs Nikolai Leonov. “These relations were already in place.”

Leonov is described today as a Russian “history professor.” But all during the Cold War Lieutenant Colonel Nikolai Leonov worked as the KGB’s main agent in Latin America. In brief, he knows what he’s talking (and laughing) about.

Leonov was Raul Castro’s case officer starting in 1953 and Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s starting in 1956. Look at those dates closely because here’s what our crackerjack CIA was saying in late 1958:

“Don’t worry. We’ve infiltrated Castro’s guerrilla group in the Sierra Mountains. The Castro brothers and Ernesto “Che” Guevara have no affiliations with any Communists.” (Havana CIA station chief Jim Noel, 1958.) [2]

“But wait!” as the famous infomercial says. “There’s more!”

“Fidel Castro is not only not a communist –he’s a strong anti-Communist fighter. He’s ready to help us in the hemisphere’s anti-communist fight and we should share our intelligence with him.” (CIA Cuba “expert” Frank Bender, April, 1959.) [3]

Weather Underground terrorist and convicted cop killer Kathy Boudin is now surrounded by fellow felons on the staff of the Columbia University School of Social Work where she crusades against the supposedly systemic racism of the justice system.

The septuagenarian Boudin is assistant adjunct professor and director of the school’s “Criminal Justice Initiative: Supporting Children, Families and Communities” (CJI), which appears to be focused [1] on keeping criminals like her out of prison by abolishing imprisonment as a punishment. As her official bio states, the initiative, which she co-founded, “is dedicated to ending society’s reliance on incarceration and retribution and advancing solutions.”

The school, which calls “mass incarceration” a “central social crisis of our time,” is little more than an indoctrination mill that churns out radical left-wing propaganda largely at taxpayer expense.

“There are approximately 1.6 million people in the nation’s prisons and jails and 7 million American children with a parent who is either incarcerated, on parole, or on probation,” according to the school. “The Criminal Justice Initiative focuses on how the social work profession can best address the educational and human needs of individuals, children, families and communities affected by incarceration.”

Boudin served 22 years in prison for her role in an assault on an armored-car in Nyack, N.Y. in which two police officers and a Brinks security guard died. Boudin was paroled in 2003 after telling officials that she took part in the $1.6 million robbery because she felt guilty for being white. Security guard Peter Paige and police officers Waverly Brown and Edward O’Grady died in the 1981 attack. Nine children subsequently grew up without their fathers.

Boudin is no stranger to irony.

Across America, the spirits of a weary nation lift as after cashing in on her last round of six-figure speeches (private jet [1] and presidential suite [2] inclusive) in a surprise announcement that no one expected, Hillary Clinton finally revealed to a breathlessly expectant country that she will run for president.

Why? Not for fame or for glory. Not even to help her brother pick up even more super-rate Haitian mining contracts [3], but to help “everyday Americans.” Everyday Americans, like you.

Or almost like you, if you could afford to spring for her private jet.

What can these everyday Americans, who may be found on the boards of major corporations, non-profits and in the roster of international fugitives, expect from eight years of Hillary Clinton?

That all depends on whether they cheaped it out by flying Hillary out in a Gulfstream 450 with a miserable cramped sixteen seats or whether they stepped up to the Gulfstream 650. Were the crudités fresh? Did the presidential suite make Hillary feel truly presidential? Or did she feel like just another flat broke contender having to deliver speeches to lobbies, corporations and trade groups to keep the wolf away from the door of her latest mansion?

In this brave new era of open government, we will be privileged to see how it all works.

The ultimate Kinsley-esque gaffe — as spotted by the Weasel Zippers in a screenshot of Hillary’s announcement that her campaign is stating that she’s “fought children And families all her career.” It’s both “Hillary Comedy Gold,” as the Zippers write, and one of her rare moments of truthfulness. Margaret Sanger couldn’t have said it better herself.

And as the London Daily Mail notes in their headline, “‘Everyday Americans need a champion’: Wealthy Hillary Clinton finally enters formal race to be president with video telling middle class voters ‘the deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top’ of the economy.”

Stacked just like the young women Bill enjoys as part of his own unique brand of “intimate campaigning,” and stacked just like the heels on a fine pair of Gucci calf leather pumps, Byron York writes at the Washington Examiner:

America rejoice! A multi-millionairess serial liar married to a multi-millionaire serial adulterer has just announced for the presidency of our country to save the middle class from impoverishment! (Or was it “income inequality”?) (Or was it “Chelsea Clinton in a Gucci dress, Mateo New York bracelet, Cartier bracelet, Garland Collection ring, Halleh ring,” as appears in this month’s [1] Elle [1]?)

Better tell Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin and Trotsky, not to mention Gil Scott-Heron. His song [2] got it wrong. The Revolution is going to be televised (until we’re blue in the face) and it will start in tony Chappaqua on a posh gated estate with pool and tennis court, guarded by the Secret Service with its own (exceptionally) private email system, infinite closed-circuit video surveillance and who knows what else?

Is everyone throwing up yet? Not even Maureen Dowd is buying [3]. Oh, well, American “liberalism” has been screwing the lower classes for the last fifty years. Why stop now?

That is not as stupid a question as it first sounds. Ostensibly we know her four ready answers.

I. Who Else?

One, there is no other credible Democrat who could run for presidency. The senior party leadership — Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Al Gore, John Kerry, and Dianne Feinstein — is shrill and buffoonish. They all have either tried before and failed, or are ossified has-beens — or both. There are no up-and-coming governors with distinguished records of executive success. There are no young charismatic Democratic senators — other than the well-preserved, 65-year-old Harvard populist Elizabeth Warren — out to make a name, who can speak well and mirror image a Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, or Mario Rubio. Congressional-district gerrymandering that encourages ethnic chauvinism and hard-left polarization has almost ensured that there will not be another minority star, like Barack Obama, who can win crossover votes and statewide office as a springboard to the White House.

II. Her Turn

Two, Hillary Clinton, like a Walter Mondale, Bob Dole or John McCain, believes that it is finally her turn. In her case she lost in 2008 and loyally served the man who defeated and often humiliated her (“you’re likable enough, Hillary” Obama condescendingly remarked [1] during a debate of Democratic presidential candidates in January of 2008).

She feels that she was robbed of a sure nomination by the upstart Obama, who cut in front of the line with his inane “hope and change” banalities and subtle race carding, as if racial chauvinism must always trump gender pandering. She blew a huge lead in the primaries, licked her wounds, and now it is time for the party to unite loyally behind her the way she did with Obama.

Remember when Senator Barack Obama assailed President George W. Bush for exceeding his presidential powers? In the twilight days of his own Presidency, Mr. Obama is speaking and acting as if he can determine U.S. foreign policy all by his lonesome.

That afflatus was on display Saturday at the Summit of Americas in Panama City, where the President took umbrage that anyone would disagree with his unilateral forays on Cuba, Iran and climate change. He was especially annoyed at Senator John McCain for daring to point out that Secretary of State John Kerry’s interpretation of his “framework” nuclear accord differs substantially with that of Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.
“That’s not how we’re supposed to run foreign policy, regardless of who’s President or Secretary of State. We can have arguments, and there are legitimate arguments to be had. I understand why people might be mistrustful of Iran. I understand why people might oppose the deal—although the reason is not because this is a bad deal per se, but they just don’t trust any deal with Iran, and may prefer to take a military approach to it,” Mr. Obama said.

Taking one-third of U.S. coal-fired power plants off the grid by 2020 simply isn’t workable. Here’s why.

Americans don’t give much thought to whether their electricity will be there when they need it. You flip a switch, the lights go on. Your phone charges up. The medical equipment in the emergency room does its job. Yet electric reliability, long a bedrock of this country’s prosperity and high standard of living, does not come as easily as its steady presence might suggest.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, a proposed regulation limiting carbon emissions from existing coal-fired plants, threatens to jeopardize the reliability that Americans and businesses have come to depend upon. The EPA proposal calls for states to cut emissions by 30% from 2005 levels by 2030. It also imposes aggressive interim targets starting in 2020 that will test states’ ability to meet these standards without disrupting service. For example, 39 states must achieve more than 50% of their final target by 2020.

Democrats are falling in line because they feel they have no choice.

Hillary Rodham Clinton did the formality of announcing her latest bid for the White House on Sunday, revealing nothing no one didn’t already know and facing no plausible competitors for the Democratic nomination. The question is whether this political machine candidacy will appeal to voters.

Mrs. Clinton is running less as an individual than as the figurehead of an apparatus of money and organization designed to keep power for the Democratic Party and American liberals. You might even call it a vast left-wing conspiracy, to modify the former First Lady’s famous coinage. She rose atop this machine not because of her personal qualities or her ideas but because she’s all the Democrats think they have.

What does Mrs. Clinton stand for? The main rationale for her candidacy seems to be that she would be the first woman President, and she’ll campaign on themes like mandated family leave and universal pre-K and child care. She was reluctant to emphasize her X chromosomes in the 2008 primaries, but now gender gets the showcase in the identity politics that defines modern Democrats.

Mrs. Clinton also ran in 2008 as inevitable—recall her kickoff motto of “I’m in it to win it”—and the irony this time is that this inevitability is probably true even as she pretends it isn’t.

Mrs. Clinton lost that race because her campaign was a snake pit of egos and competing power centers that allowed an untested freshman Illinois Senator to steal the nomination. She won’t make those mistakes again—and former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley is not a phenom in the President Obama mold. He also has the liability of his birth as a straight white male.

Just 15 days before the 9/11 attacks, a well-connected Saudi family suddenly abandoned their luxury home in Sarasota, Fla., leaving behind jewelry, clothes, opulent furniture, a driveway full of cars — including a brand new Chrysler PT Cruiser — and even a refrigerator full of food.

About the only thing not left behind was a forwarding address. The occupants simply vanished without notifying their neighbors, realtor or even mail carrier.

The 3,300-square-foot home on Escondito Circle belonged to Esam Ghazzawi, a Saudi adviser to the nephew of then-King Fahd. But at the time, it was occupied by his daughter and son-in-law, who beat a hasty retreat back to Saudi Arabia just two weeks before the attacks after nearly a six-year stay here.

Neighbors took note of the troubling coincidence and called the FBI, which opened an investigation that led to the startling discovery that at least one “family member” trained at the same flight school as some of the 9/11 hijackers in nearby Venice, Fla.