RUTHFULLY YOURS

The former Florida governor made over $2 million from a hospital conglomerate’s Obamacare-driven growth. Now, as he prepares to run for president, he says the law should be repealed.

In early 2007, Tenet Healthcare Corp., the giant, publicly traded hospital conglomerate, was reeling. The previous year, the company had been forced to agree to a $900 million settlement with the Justice Department in a Medicare-fraud scandal. Seeking to improve its reputation, Tenet turned to Jeb Bush, offering the former Florida governor a seat on its board of directors. In the more than seven years Bush served on Tenet’s board, the company executed a remarkable turnaround, emerging from the scandal into a period of expansion that returned it to the top of the health-care industry. Bush himself benefited handsomely from the growth.

Obama shows the fallacy of always leaving force as a last resort. Months after leaving the Pentagon nearly nine years ago, I wrote in NR (“Before They Go Nuclear . . . ”) that the Bush administration’s Europe-led sanctions strategy would lead to an Iranian nuclear weapon. Why? Because of the implicit understanding among the U.S. and its European partners that force was off the table as long as further sanctions could be imposed.

Obama shows the fallacy of always leaving force as a last resort. Months after leaving the Pentagon nearly nine years ago, I wrote in NR (“Before They Go Nuclear . . . ”) that the Bush administration’s Europe-led sanctions strategy would lead to an Iranian nuclear weapon. Why? Because of the implicit understanding among the U.S. and its European partners that force was off the table as long as further sanctions could be imposed.

The Obama administration has always insisted that force is on the table “if diplomacy fails.” But it has also insisted that strikes would only slow the Iranian program down. That’s of a piece with the rest of the administration’s approach, which appears to reject any notion of “coercive diplomacy.” The president is a faithful believer that diplomacy depends on dialogue and mutual understanding, and that “pressure” is provocative and therefore undermines diplomacy.

One of the many anomalies of Pres. Barack Hussein Obama’s collapsing foreign policy is Washington ’s growing rift with Israel , despite the two countries’ historically intimate ties at every level.

Obama’s fundamental antagonism toward Israel was always apparent: during the 2008 campaign he announced one of his “transformations” would be putting “light between the U.S. and Israel ”. Nor were his various close relationships to bitter American Israeli critics secret: Obama sat through two decades of anti-Israel, anti-Semitic sermons by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, in turn a friend of the notorious Louis Ferrakhan. There was his close friendship with Rashid Ismail Khalidi, once Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organization spokesman. [Obama’s 2005 speech at a send-off party for Khalidid departing the University of Chicago for Columbia University is bottled up along with all his other records.] The traditional “Arabists” in the Washington bureaucracy – for example, Obama’s CIA Director John O. Brennan, who continues to deny “jihad” is a call to war against the West – bring up the rear.

The numbers of Christians in the Middle East are dwindling. In Iraq, there were 1.4 million Christians in 2003 and there are now 270,000. In Syria, they were 1,1 million before the civil war and are now 400,000. Everywhere, from Lybia to Iraq, the Islamic State is beheading Christians or converting them to Islam.

It is a demographic and religious revolution of immense historic consequences. We talk with Bat Ye’or, the great Jewish historian of Egyptian origin who dedicated many books to what she called “dhimmitude”, the subjugation of minorities (Jews and Christians) under Islam.

What is the situation of Eastern Christianity?

The situation of Eastern Christianity is a tragedy of immense proportions. It entails human sufferings on a traumatic scale. Even those, like Egyptian President Sisi who would like to help, seem powerless in such dramatic circumstances. As for the West, the ideological and strategic choices it made in the last century incapacitate it and obscure its understanding.

EXERPT

What is it about climate change that brings out the nuts and fruitcake theories? Now we learn that bestowing feminine names, or merely feminine-sounding ones, on hurricanes makes them so much more deadly

“Another storm in the gender tea-cup is also wreaking havoc. It began in mid-2014, when this paper – “Female Hurricanes Are Deadlier Than Male Hurricanes” – appeared here in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Sharon Shavitt, Walter H. Stellner Professor of Marketing at the University of Illinois, and her three co-authors, claim that an ‘unexplored social factor’ – namely ‘gender-based expectations’ – has a measurable ‘influence on the human toll of hurricanes that are assigned gendered names’.

“Feminine-named hurricanes (vs. masculine-named hurricanes) cause significantly more deaths, apparently because they lead to lower perceived risk and consequently less preparedness. Using names such as Eloise or Charlie for referencing hurricanes….taps into well-developed and widely held gender stereotypes, with potentially deadly consequences.

Do you support any kind of protest against Islamic laws such as killing in the name of Allah, stoning, honor killing, lashing, amputating, child marriages, slavery or burning people alive? Or do you protest the people protesting these practices?

“Have we reached such a stage of intolerance that we cannot listen to one writer profess admiration for another without wanting to attack her with a brick and a knife?… If our Constitution is to mean anything, we must ensure our right to free speech.” — Steve Connolly, Managing Director, Penguin Random House, South Africa.

The scenario of the rainbow nation has been changing rapidly as Islamic preaching is fired up in in all the provinces.

Do you support any kind of protest against Islamic laws being used in modern societies? Do you protest against suicide bombing, killing in the name of Allah, stoning, honor killing, lashing, amputating, slavery, burning people alive, hijab (Islamic veil for women), child marriages, polygamy or other extremist Islamic practices?

Or do you protest the people protesting these practices? If so, you are also at high risk, it does not matter wherever you live.

What would the U.S. President say if the blacks lynched in America’s old South were referred to as “random folks” or “Americans”?

Al Shabaab of course has no problem emphasizing the fact that Christians were being killed because they were Christians: “There are many dead bodies of Christians inside the building,” its spokesman said.

Can anyone explain why the West gives fanciful excuses for what these killers are doing, despite their perfectly clear explanations for what they are doing?

Muslims targeting Christians or Jews means, “don’t focus on the motivations of the Muslims.” Muslims defending Christians or Jews means “desperately focus on the motivations of the Muslims.”

People could at least spare some time this Easter to think about — and do anything they can to help — the beleaguered Christian communities worldwide.

This Easter, the world should spare a thought for the world’s Christians. In Western Europe, this time of year is increasingly secularised, but in large parts of the rest of the world, people are being massacred relentlessly because of a faith on which much of the developed world was founded but now ignores.

Just as I was ready to discontinue my criticism of President Obama and return to my scribblings on other issues, I find that once again, I overestimated him. I took Obama at his word for the 25 odd times (I have the exact dates) where he assured us that he would never tolerate a nuclear Iran. This was clearly a case of campaign or money raising rhetoric and we know that he doesn’t take such things seriously (unless they are coming from Netanyahu). Even the Washington Post’s editorial points out that Obama’s Iran deal fails to deliver on his promises, ending with: “We hope Mr. Obama will make as much effort to engage in good faith with skeptical allies and domestic critics as he has with the Iranian regime.”

President Obama tells us, with great confidence. that even if Iran cheats, it would still be a year away from having an actual bomb. Of course, he is going to have to explain that logic to Saudi Arabia , Egypt and Turkey who will be clamoring to have their own nuclear weapons. He won’t bother trying to convince Israel of how good a deal this is. They know that if Iran cheats, it would take quite a while to recognize this and an even longer period to do anything about it. By then, it would be too late. If any congressmen dare to oppose this deal, they better have their tax accountants and lawyers on the ready. Ask Menendez and Chaffetz what a vindictive federal government can achieve.

Obama is essentially handing over inspections and verification to the UN, so Iran will be able to get away with anything as they build their nuclear arsenal. AND the global sanctions cannot be reinstituted on a “snap back” basis (except for US only sanctions applied by veto-proof Congress). Rest of World places trade with Iran above nuclear security (odd because Europe is geographically so much closer to Iran than US). Sanctions are the ONLY leverage US has over Iran, and Obama has just thrown away the “sanctions” card. So after UN assumes control over inspections/verification, the US will be unable to do anything but “jaw bone” against Iranian terrorists. Obama is “handcuffing” future US presidents by handing over to UN control over nuclear inspections and verification – any future US prez will become international pariah if he violates/removes UN control over Iranian inspections/verification just because it is not working. When will Republicans start pointing this out to electorate ???

So what did you expect? The “framework” to delay (not to stop) Iran’s nuclear program is a deal that renders us all sitting ducks to the whims of the ayatollahs. For this we can thank the Democrats who spent months working as lawyers for the other side.

Why did it take weeks of negotiations when a quick phone call would have been enough, simply saying, “You win. We lose.”
Well it sure seems that way since the Islamic Republic got everything it wanted and John Kerry came back with nothing.

Why did it take weeks of negotiations when a quick phone call would have been enough, simply saying, “You win. We lose.”

Iran gets to keep its nuclear arsenal intact. President Obama came out to say, “It’s a good deal.”

For them, yes.

The entire effort, concluded on Thursday but to be continued, again, into June, is a production of the Democratic Party.

The Republicans had no say. Will the GOP-controlled House and Senate get a word in edgewise before papers are signed? We don’t know. Obama has the pen.

Immediately after the Democrats, with a straight face, declared, “It’s the best we can do,” the ayatollahs entered laughing.