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Ruth King

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Calling Congress: The U.S.-Israel Memorandum of Understanding by Shoshana Bryen

By on September 15th, 2016

The new Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) plans to change a fundamental part of the U.S.-Israel security relationship — missile defense.

President Obama is tying Israel’s hands for the future by extracting a promise that it will not approach Congress for funds in excess of those in the MOU “unless it is at war.”

What does that mean? Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria still maintain a state of war with Israel, as does Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and sometimes the Palestinian Authority. Did the Obama Administration leave Israel a loophole for Congressional assistance? Or is it denying that Israel lives in a perpetual and evolving state of threat and often fights “wars” that are essential to the protection of its population, but are not formally declared?

“Over the next decade, [Israel] is going to need to spend more on domestic defense, research and development, because the IDF is going to be under more threat, not less. This MOU sends the wrong signal to the Ayatollahs. I am appalled that the administration would (give) the largest state sponsor of terrorism access to $150 billion in sanctions relief without any requirement that they change their behavior. Instead, it is nickeling and diming Israel.” – Senator Lindsay Graham.

Yes. It is a lot of money.

Yes. A ten-year deal provides a stable base for Israeli planning.

Yes. With the unsettled American political situation and the unsettled military situation in Israel’s neighborhood, stability counts.

No. Israel’s military industries will not collapse without the use of 25% of its American aid internally.

Yes. Israel remains a close and respected ally of the American military establishment.

So why does the new U.S.-Israel Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) feel oddly coercive on the part of President Obama? True, the current U.S. president finds the current prime minister of Israel to be a strategic liability regarding his plans for Iran as well as a general pain in the neck. So there is the “punishment” angle. But at least as important is the ongoing power play between the president and Congress. This encompasses missile defense, an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMA) for Iraq and Syria, climate change, the Iran deal, “no first use” nuclear policy, Israel, and more.

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Brexit and Norway: What to Avoid by Fjordman

By on September 15th, 2016

“[Britain wants] to be like Switzerland but they don’t know that Switzerland has to pay an enormous amount to the EU… They will have to accept the free movement of people and pay high fees and accept some laws which they would have no influence on.” — Daniel Pedroletti, president of the Swiss community group New Helvetic Society London.
Norway is the only country that has adopted all EU directives before their deadline. Norway, which is supposedly not a member of the EU, thus implements EU rules and regulations more obediently than do the founding members France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
Most of Norway’s laws are currently written by bureaucrats in Brussels, not by elected parliamentarians in Norway.
The citizens of Norway rejected membership in the EU, twice. Opinion polls today show that a very large majority of Norwegians are against membership in the EU. Despite this, the nation’s politicians have made the country more or less a member of the EU, only without any influence or voting rights — in opposition to the popular will, and possibly also in violation of the country’s Constitution.
The British should study the case of Norway closely. But mainly as a negative example of what to avoid.

On June 23, 2016, 51.9% of the voters in the United Kingdom voted for leaving the European Union (EU). The turnout was high, and the British referendum gained great international attention. Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s National Front, praised the result, calling Brexit “the most important moment since the fall of the Berlin Wall.” Le Pen said that if she wins France’s 2017 presidential election she would call a referendum on leaving the EU.

Nigel Farage stepped down as leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) shortly after winning the historic vote. Many death threats against him and his family from supporters of the EU reportedly affected his decision.

The complicated divorce process between the UK and the EU could take years of negotiations. Some people have looked to Switzerland and Norway, two of the wealthiest countries in Europe, as possible models to follow, yet both maintain a close cooperation with the EU. There are also concerns in Switzerland and Norway about how Brexit will impact their own relationship with the EU.

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Trump Overtakes Clinton in New Polls in Nevada, Ohio By Allison Kite

By on September 15th, 2016

Donald Trump has overtaken Hillary Clinton in Nevada and Ohio, two key swing states, in a pair of polls released on Wednesday.

In Ohio, which has voted for the winning presidential candidate in the last 10 elections, Mr. Trump, the Republican nominee, leads Mrs. Clinton by 5 points among likely voters, 44% to 39%, in a Bloomberg Politics poll. Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein trail with 10% and 3%, respectively.
In Nevada, Mr. Trump leads Mrs. Clinton by 2 points among likely voters, 44% to 42%. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson has 8% and 3% chose “None of these candidates,” a ballot option in that state, according to a new poll by Monmouth University. In July, Monmouth reported a 4-point lead for Mrs. Clinton.

The polls were conducted as Mrs. Clinton dealt with criticism over her denigration on Friday of “half” of Mr. Trump’s supporters as falling into a “basket of deplorables.” On Sunday, she took ill at a Sept. 11 memorial ceremony, and her campaign subsequently revealed she had been diagnosed with pneumonia.

Mrs. Clinton had been leading in Ohio in the recent RealClearPolitics average of polls.

The Bloomberg Politics poll of 802 likely Ohio voters was conducted Sept. 9 – 12 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. The Monmouth University poll of 406 likely Nevada voters was conducted Sept. 11- 13, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.89 points.

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What’s a Reagan Internationalist to Do? Unlike Trump, the former secretary of state has an actual record of mistakes and bad judgment in foreign policy. By Robert G. Kaufman

By on September 15th, 2016

Mr. Kaufman, a professor of public policy at Pepperdine University, is the author of “Dangerous Doctrine: How Obama’s Grand Strategy Weakened America” (University Press of Kentucky, 2016).

“A vote for Hillary Clinton is therefore a vote for Mr. Obama’s dangerous doctrine, which fears American power more than it fears our enemies. As secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton contributed enormously to lowering the barriers to aggression everywhere—with much worse to come unless we reverse course.The internationalist conservatives who oppose Mr. Trump on foreign-policy grounds have a point. But they shouldn’t fool themselves that they will get something better with Mrs. Clinton.Yet the internationalist conservatives who endorse Hillary Clinton delude themselves if they think things would be better with a President Clinton. As secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton served loyally as President Obama’s first mate on his foreign-policy Titanic. And unlike Mr. Trump, Mrs. Clinton has an actual record of mistakes and bad judgment in foreign policy.”

Consider:

Hillary Clinton named the ill-fated reset with Mr. Putin, subverting Ukraine’s independence and imperiling America’s Eastern European NATO allies fearful of becoming Mr. Putin’s next target. She also blocked efforts to place the murderous Boko Haram on the State Department’s list of international sponsors of terrorism, fostering the Obama administration’s fictitious narrative that killing Osama bin Laden had ended the war on terror.

Mrs. Clinton—emblematic of the administration’s unwillingness to acknowledge radical Islam as a danger—blamed the attack on the Libyan Embassy on a Coptic Christian video denigrating Islam rather than on the obvious culprits and their Islamist motivations timed for the anniversary of 9/11. She fatuously called Syria’s Bashar Assad a reformer with whom we could do business, and she touted the absurd notion that American “smart power” could substitute for American resolve, moral clarity and military might.

Mrs. Clinton remained silent, too, on President Obama’s systematic, unwise and dishonorable obsession with putting distance between the U.S. and a democratic Israel while conciliating the worst and most anti-American regimes in international politics. Candidate Clinton still defends an indefensible Iran deal she advocated as secretary of state that puts Iran on the autobahn to crossing the nuclear threshold while tranquilizing Americans to the gathering danger.

Her choice of running mate, Tim Kaine, has the dubious distinction of being in the vanguard of the apologists for an untenable agreement subsidizing a virulently aggressive anti-American Iran while likely triggering a nuclear arms race in the world’s most volatile region.

Even after the June terrorist attack in Orlando, Mrs. Clinton could barely utter the words Islamic radicalism, intimating that the weapons rather than the motivations of those wielding them deserved primary blame. That’s the equivalent of blaming Pearl Harbor on military aviation rather than the Imperial Japanese regime.

As secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton bears heavy responsibility for the debacle in Libya. She was the administration’s leading proponent for American intervention under the auspices of the United Nations, NATO and the Arab League, bypassing the Congress. Libya has become a breeding ground of Islamist terrorism because America’s mission was ill-defined and its withdrawal premature. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Don’t Raise the Minimum Wage: Trump Has a Better Plan Use the tax code to help working families afford child care. That’s a way to boost incomes without the unemployment side effect. By Michael Saltsman

By on September 15th, 2016

Donald Trump is no one’s idea of a traditional Republican, but his speech Tuesday showed the rank-and-file a better way to help workers at the bottom. Democrats pound the need to raise the minimum wage, which is a tricky political issue for the GOP. “Fight for $15” fits well on a protest sign, and it’s easy to paint opponents of a higher minimum wage as heartless, even though their economic reasoning is sound.

Speaking in a Philadelphia suburb, Mr. Trump proposed a new benefit: allowing families to deduct child-care expenses on their income taxes. For a single-parent household with no income-tax liability—the families that Democrats target with their minimum-wage message—this wouldn’t do much good. So Mr. Trump offered an alternative: an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) to offset child-care expenses.

The EITC, signed into law by President Gerald Ford in 1975, has for decades been championed by Republican and Democratic presidents alike. The word “credit” is a misnomer; the policy is better described as a wage supplement for low-income employees, topping up their income on a sliding scale.

To be eligible for the EITC a person must hold a job and earn income. The size of the annual payment depends not on tax liability, but on how much the employee earns and how many children he or she has. Payments phase out gradually as income rises, to avoid the counterproductive “cliff” effect that characterizes other social-welfare programs.

Economists have found much to like about the policy: A 2008 study, supported in part by my organization and published in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, found that when the credit has been expanded in the past, employment of single mothers rose. So did their wages. Mr. Trump would build on this success by further expanding the credit to help cover eligible child-care expenses. The maximum supplement under his plan would be one-half the amount of the employee’s payroll taxes (i.e. FICA and Medicare). For married couples, the maximum would be calculated from the lower-earning spouse. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Manila Turns Anti-American Duterte seems ready to trade sovereignty for Chinese cash.

By on September 15th, 2016

Days after Rodrigo Duterte called Barack Obama a “son of a whore,” the Philippine President announced he would expel U.S. counterterror forces from the southern Philippines, cease joint South China Sea patrols with the U.S. Navy and begin buying arms from Russia and China—a trifecta of policy shifts that will harm regional security.

“I do not like the Americans. It’s simply a matter of principle for me,” Mr. Duterte said Monday. His record backs him up.

Before winning election in May, Mr. Duterte was the longtime mayor of Davao in the restive southern province of Mindanao, where he railed against the presence of U.S. forces who were invited by previous national governments to fight al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf terrorists. As mayor he kept U.S. drones out of Davao, refused to become Philippine Defense Minister for fear of working with Washington, and expressed “hatred” for the U.S. over a 2002 explosion in a Davao hotel for which he blames the FBI.

U.S. operations in Mindanao over the past two decades—counterterror raids, training of local forces, economic development—helped calm an insurgency that was killing Filipinos and foreigners by the hundreds, corrupting Philippine armed forces and bedeviling national leaders in Manila. But Mr. Duterte prefers to see the U.S. as an ex-colonial overlord trying to reimpose its will.

Many Filipinos assumed Mr. Duterte’s views would moderate once he became President. His predecessor, Benigno Aquino, initially courted China but then dramatically deepened security ties with the U.S. after Beijing escalated its assault on Philippine rights in the South China Sea. But three months into his tenure, and despite the landmark international-tribunal verdict against China’s maritime behavior in July, the new leader is increasingly spurning Washington for Beijing.

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Les Déplorables Hillary Clinton names the five phobias of Donald Trump’s political supporters. By Daniel Henninger

By on September 15th, 2016

Hillary Clinton’s comment that half of Donald Trump’s supporters are “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic”—a heck of a lot of phobia for anyone to lug around all day—puts back in play what will be seen as one of the 2016 campaign’s defining forces: the revolt of the politically incorrect.

They may not live at the level of Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables,” but it was only a matter of time before les déplorables—our own writhing mass of unheard Americans—rebelled against the intellectual elites’ ancien régime of political correctness.
It remains to be seen what effect Hillary’s five phobias will have on the race, which tightened even before these remarks and Pneumonia-gate. The two events produced one of Mrs. Clinton’s worst weeks in opposite ways.

As with the irrepressible email server, Mrs. Clinton’s handling of her infirmity—“I feel great,” the pneumonia-infected candidate said while hugging a little girl—deepened the hole of distrust she lives in. At the same time, her dismissal, at Barbra Streisand’s LGBT fundraiser, of uncounted millions of Americans as deplorables had the ring of genuine belief.

Perhaps sensing that public knowledge of what she really thinks could be a political liability, Mrs. Clinton went on to describe “people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them . . . and they’re just desperate for change.”

She is of course describing the people in Charles Murray’s recent and compelling book on cultural disintegration among the working class, “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010.” This is indeed the bedrock of the broader Trump base.

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The Burkini Ban Protects Women — a Daniel Greenfield Moment

By on September 15th, 2016

This special edition of The Glazov Gang presents The Daniel Greenfield Moment with Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center who writes the blog The Point at Frontpagemag.com.

Daniel discussed The Burkini Ban Protects Women, explaining why France’s burkini ban is right.

Don’t miss it!

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Engraved in Stone by Tabitha Korol

By on September 14th, 2016

The Children of Abraham of the Southern Tier, an interfaith organization in Johnson City, has taken offense at the 9/11 memorial raised in the nearby Town of Owego, New York. This association of misguided multiculturalists and Muslim moderates allege that identifying the perpetrators of the worst individual act of aggression on American soil would encourage Muslim hatred, never once excoriating the very act that resulted in the death and injury to more than 3,000 American victims and 453 responders and boundless grief for their families and for all Americans.

Did the moderates ever attempt to apologize for the horrific crime that forced people to jump to their death rather than be burned alive? Did they express their sorrow for the victims and heroic rescue workers, or atone in a way to benefit the families that suffered such tragic loss? Do they even acknowledge that Islamic terrorists continue their march of evil, putting America and Europe on high alert for 9/11, or that this was part of Islam’s perpetual holy war against every living being on the planet. No. And the city manager’s overtures were also snubbed.

The Muslim residents of Johnson City may be moderates who never take up a lethal weapon for Allah, but they are engaging in a subtle act of civilizational or settlement jihad. Such people are comparatively discreet in Western society, going about their lives inconspicuously, but effecting regime changes in gradual increments. By their refusal to acknowledge the obvious links between Islam and 9/11, they shield those who spew hatred against America, Israel and democracy; they empower the academics and students who vilify Israel and Jewish students on campus, and they facilitate the crossing of borders for hijra (conquest by increased population). Under the guise of injured sensibilities, they insist on the removal of anything that may identify those who pursue our destruction and conquest with Islam, hoping to erase the ugly truth that fourteen centuries of barbarism continues unabated in every country where Islam is found.

They would have us believe that a tiny minority is to blame, but a recent Pew Research poll shows that 51 percent of American Muslims choose to be governed by sharia; 30% believe it is legitimate to use violence against those who insult Muhammed, the Koran, or Islam; 25 percent believe violence against Americans can be justified as part of the global jihad; and nearly 20% believe the use of violence in the US is justified in order to make sharia the law of the land. When presented with a choice when sharia conflicts with the US Constitution and Bill of Rights, 33% say sharia should be supreme. That’s some minority! Politically, 48% are Democrats, 19 percent Independents, and 19 percent Republicans.

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Vanderbilt: Share and Ask Pronouns When Making Introductions ‘Even to Familiar Colleagues and Students’ By Katherine Timpf

By on September 14th, 2016

Vanderbilt University is asking faculty to tell everyone they meet on campus which pronouns they prefer and to ask other people to tell them theirs, even when dealing with “familiar colleagues and students.”

“When introducing yourself, offer your name and pronouns — even to familiar colleagues and students,” asks a poster created by the school’s Faculty Senate Gender Inclusivity Task Force. “Offer your name and pronoun in faculty meetings, committees, and other spaces where students may not be present.”

The poster also gives faculty several examples of how to do this:

“I’m Steve and I use he/him/his pronouns. What should I call you?” and “My pronouns are they/them/theirs. What should I call you?”

Now, personally, I consider it showing basic respect to call people by the pronouns that they choose to use, and I believe that people who choose to use pronouns that might be different from what people might expect should feel comfortable sharing that with others.

This policy, though, makes no sense for one glaring reason: Why the hell would people who are already “familiar” with each other have to share and ask their pronouns when making introductions? After all, at least in most cases, I’m sure that being “familiar” with someone would mean you already know this kind of basic information about them. Certainly, anyone even remotely “familiar” with me would already know that I’m a cisgender woman who uses the pronouns “she/her/hers.” What on earth could be the benefit of pressuring a person to have to ask “What should I call you?” if that person already knows?

What’s more, the poster also advises faculty to include their pronouns in their email signatures, and MRCTV reports that it has also started listing preferred pronouns on faculty member’s nameplates — and knowing about these two suggestions makes the suggestion for an automatic, without-exception pronoun discussion upon meeting even more ridiculous. After all, an email exchange or walking past a person’s office and seeing the nameplate are excellent examples of how people might already be “familiar” with each other before actually having made “introductions.” If two people on Vanderbilt’s campus — people who were following all of the school’s pronoun-related suggestions — found themselves in this situation, they would already know that person’s pronouns before meeting. In order to continue to follow the guidelines, however, they would still have to ask — because it specifies that being “familiar” is no excuse.

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