Crossing a Line to Sell a Deal….In Praise of Senator Schumer

“This use of anti-Jewish incitement as a political tool is a sickening new development in American political discourse, and we have heard too much of it lately—some coming, ominously, from our own White House and its representatives. Let’s not mince words: Murmuring about “money” and “lobbying” and “foreign interests” who seek to drag America into war is a direct attempt to play the dual-loyalty card. It’s the kind of dark, nasty stuff we might expect to hear at a white power rally, not from the President of the United States—and it’s gotten so blatant that even many of us who are generally sympathetic to the administration, and even this deal, have been shaken by it.”

The White House and its allies shouldn’t need to smear American Jews–and a sitting senator–as dual loyalists to make their case.

Chuck Schumer is a politician—a skilled and successful one. Which means that today’s announcement, following months of wildly uncharacteristic silence, that the senior Senator from New York is opposing the Administration’s nuclear deal with Iran is first and foremost a reflection of his calculations as to where his own self-interest lies. It does not take an electoral genius to imagine why a Senator from New York State might oppose a deal that keeps many Jewish voters—and an even higher percentage of non-Jewish voters—up at night. Keeping your base happy is generally the first rule of political survival.

The Greatest Liberation Humanitarians in Uniform by Warren Kozak ****

Many years ago, I struck up a conversation with a Dutch businessman in a hotel in China. In the course of our discussion, I learned that he had been born in Asia, in the Dutch East Indies, today known as Indonesia. I quickly calculated that he was old enough to have been alive during World War II, so I asked what happened to him?

He told me that he and his parents spent the entire war in a Japanese prison camp.

“What was that like?” I asked.

He explained that because his family entered the camp when he was 3 years old and were liberated when he was 8, he really had no basis of comparison to anything else.

“That’s all I knew,” he said. “That was really my whole life up until then.”

They got by. They survived. As a child, he even found ways to play with some simple toys his mother made for him. He didn’t appear scarred in any way, and I thought our conversation had ended. But after a long pause, for some reason he opened up and began to tell me a story that I have never forgotten. It is a story that actually said more about my own country, its singularity and its values.

“When we were liberated,” he said, “these soldiers came into the camp. They were different. They looked like giants and they were all smiling.”

One of these giants quietly sat down next to him and gently lifted him on his knee. The soldier reached into his pack and took out a tin can, which contained a piece of bread, something the boy had never seen. Then he reached back and opened another can with a strange, colorful paste.

“I watched the soldier as he slowly spread jam over the bread and then he gave it to me.”

The man stopped there for a moment as his voice choked up, and then he turned and looked straight at me. “I travel all over the world.” He said. “I eat in very expensive restaurants .  .  . and I will never, ever, eat anything again that tasted so good.”

I didn’t realize that I was nodding in agreement and I said, “I know,” to which he quickly corrected me: “No, you will never know .  .  . and that’s a very lucky thing.”

Seventy years ago this summer, as World War II came to its climactic end, the world became a vast arena of liberated humanity. People came out of prison camps and attics, forests and cellars. Whole countries and populations were freed as the Nazi army crumbled and Japan surrendered. Millions of human beings, many of whom had been slaves for years, most of them starving, were suddenly released.

Their liberators included, along with our allies, a vast army of millions of young Americans—for some reason everyone referred to them as boys or “our boys.” Paul Fussell, the late writer, who was a young lieutenant in the 103rd Infantry, accurately titled his war memoir The Boys’ Crusade.

Gabriel Schoenfeld- Book Review of “The Great War of Our Time: The CIA’s Fight Against Terrorism–From al Qa’ida to ISIS” By Michael Morell

When the history of United States in the 21st century is written, the role of the Central Intelligence Agency will loom large in its early chapters. Two of the spy agency’s mistakes had terrible consequences for the future of the country. First, it failed to detect the September 11 plot. Second, it issued a faulty estimate that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction, which led to a major war. What went wrong?

Not long ago, Michael Morell hung up his trench coat after a 31-year career in the agency that took him from an entry level position to an array of high-level postings, ending up as CIA deputy director under Barack Obama. His memoir, The Great War of Our Time: The CIA’s Fight Against Terrorism–From al Qa’ida to ISIS, offers a tour of agency successes and failures and also explores a number of other highly controversial matters, including the “enhanced interrogation” of terrorists, and the agency’s convoluted role in the 2012 Benghazi imbroglio.

As I See It: The West’s Deadly Culture of Unreason : Melanie Phillips****

The Western world is facing an unprecedented threat from a global eclipse of reason.The Western world is facing an unprecedented threat from a global eclipse of reason.

Deranged falsehoods about Jews and Israel pour out of the Arab and Muslim world. Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, asserts that the Jews are a “cancerous tumor.” Sunnis tell each other that the Jews are a global conspiracy of evil.

Jews recognize such murderous and paranoid lunacies from the ravings of last century’s Nazis and communists and, before them, Christians in thrall to medieval and apocalyptic conspiracy theories.

It would be natural to suppose that all those civilizational trauma have left the Western world sadder but wiser. Alas, that is not the case.

For all their horrors, fascism and communism were confined to particular regimes, in Nazi Germany and its fascist allies or the Soviet Union and its satellites.

MY SAY: THE DEBATES LAST NIGHT-

First, let me say I am proud to be a Conservative Republican…. All the candidates in both debates , are patriots and have a vision and dedication to restoring our security, freedom and purpose…some more eloquent and knowledgeable than others.

Second: I was right about Trump. He is an ass, crass with no class and has not a single policy or principle that he can discuss without insult. I found his most repellant answer to be his boast that he supports all candidates of both parties so that he can call in favors. He is boorish and people will soon tire of him.

Third, I was wrong about Carly Fiorina who is beyond impressive…calm, in control and knows all the facts on both domestic and foreign policy. She is clearly in fighting form and deserves a place at the top even though it is hard to overlook her past (as advisor to John McCain) positions on immigration reform and cap and trade, and renewable energy and climate change.

Fourth: And what about Ben Carson? His instincts are perfect and his comments on race, and his closing comments were perfection. Not really presidential but a solid 10 on the likeability.

Fifth: Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio both did really well- the best in my opinion…polite, concise, and bless Cruz for stating that he would move America’s embassy to Jerusalem.

Sixth:Christie and Huckabee were fine and Huckabee provided a great line with contrasting Reagan’s “trust but verify” with Obama’s “trust and vilify” and he did scorch Hillary but his tax plan is very wobbly. Walker was colorless but made no glaring error. Kasich and Jeb Bush were boring and I am sick of hearing how the latter wants to “lift our spirits.” My spirits are soaring but thanks anyway. Rand, Jindal, Santorum, Pataki, Graham and Perry? Bye, bye.

Sweden: The Military that Disappeared by Ingrid Carlqvist

According to a 2013 statement by Sweden’s Supreme Commander Sverker Göransson, Sweden can, at best and in five years, defend itself in one place for one week.

“One needs to always be prepared to defend the nation’s capital, vital infrastructure, power supply and telecommunications, important airports, import of basic necessities and military reinforcements. … [Sweden] today does not have that capability. … The consensus had been that no state in Europe would ever attack another state. But someone just had, and it wasn’t just anybody. It was Russia.” — Wilhelm Agrell, military historian.

“The idea of defending Sweden as the most important thing was lost.” — Owe Wictorin, former Supreme Commander.

Who’s the Warmonger? by Rachel Ehrenfeld

President Obama’s choice to talk about the Iran deal a day before the much

talked about Republican candidates’ debate on FoxNews was planned to bury the issue. Indeed, the major media has been busy covering the candidates and the disastrous agreement with Iran has been pushed to the wayside for the moment.

Had Obama just given his Iran deal stump speech, that might have worked.

But, he chose to berate opponents of the deal in ad hominem fashion, for example saying that the Republican caucus in Congress was making common cause with the hardliners in Iran. This statement alone has caused considerable outrage.

JAMIE GLAZOV MOMENT – HOW LEFTISTS HATE MUSLIMS

http://jamieglazov.com/2015/08/06/jamie-glazov-moment-how-leftists-hate-muslims/

In this new Jamie Glazov Moment, Jamie discusses “How Leftists Hate Muslims,” building on the first and second episodes titled: “Why I Love Muslims.”

In this segment, he wonders where all the leftists are helping oppressed Muslim women under Islamic gender apartheid.

Don’t miss this special Jamie Glazov Moment:

OBAMA’S LIES ABOUT BUSH AND IRAQ BY ARNOLD AHLERT

Covering his betrayal of America with discredited falsehoods.

The president’s speech on the Iranian deal, delivered at American University on Wednesday, was vintage Obama, as in a compendium of demagoguery, historical revisionism and outright lying. Nothing emphasized that more forcefully than the portion of the Obama’s speech addressing the war in Iraq. Obama insisted U.S. involvement there was the result of “a mindset characterized by a preference for military action over diplomacy, a mindset that put a premium on unilateral U.S. action over the painstaking work of building international consensus, a mindset that exaggerated threats beyond what the intelligence supported.”

That is litany of falsehoods. First, it was a complete lack of military action against a rapidly metastasizing Islamist terror threat, studiously ignored during the Clinton years, that gave Osama bin Laden the ability to plan and execute the 9/11 attacks from the terrorist sanctuary provided to al Qaeda by the Taliban government in Afghanistan. That would be the same Bill Clinton, along with numerous other Democrats, including Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and Al Gore who provided ample incentive for the invasion of Iraq, characterizing Saddam Hussein and his burgeoning WMD program as a mortal threat to world peace and stability. Moreover, as David Horowitz and Ben Johnson explain in their book “Party of Defeat,” every Democrat who voted to authorize the use of military force in Iraq—including Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards, Joe Biden, and Chuck Schumer—had access to the same National Intelligence Estimate that Bush and Republicans did.

Do Women’s Rights and Black Lives Matter in the Middle East and Africa? Not to the Left. by Jack Kerwick

Feminists and other “progressives” in America cry oppression at the mere suggestion that taxpayers shouldn’t be made to subsidize abortion services.

Black (and non-black) American activists scream that “Black Lives Matter” whenever a black criminal suspect dies in an altercation with police.

In the meantime, there is scarcely a peep from either of these sectors when it comes to the unrelenting brutality suffered by women and black Africans in places under the thumb of the Islamic State.

When I noted this selective outrage to a left-leaning colleague of mine, he responded that the one issue didn’t have anything to do with the other. But this response misses the point for two reasons.