RUTHFULLY YOURS

For a Party whose obituary has been written, Republican candidates showed themselves to be a lively, diverse and talented group. Among the seventeen on stage Thursday evening were a woman, an African-American, an Indian-American and two Hispanics. They ranged in age from 44 to 69. They included Senators and Governors, both current and past, business people and a brain surgeon. They are more representative of today’s polyglot United States than the bland, old, White folk who comprise those running on the Democrat ticket. Like Mark Twain once wrote about himself, death notices for the GOP are premature.

The debate continued in editorials, columns, on talk shows and in the blogosphere. While a Gallup Poll of likely Republican voters determined Marco Rubio and Scott Walker the winners, Donald Trump became the most discussed participant. While he enjoys belittling others, Mr. Trump has a thin skin. His responses to Megyn Kelly’s questions were incendiary and ungracious. He is not a nice man. Nevertheless, he continues to feed off the discontent that seems pervasive – for some good reasons – in much of the Country. Throughout the debate, Mr. Trump looked like he had bitten into a lemon that was especially sour. He is not my choice and I suspect his fame will fade, but I can understand why so many are fed up with Washington and the cronyism that has become worse over the past six and a half years. The Left, of course, loves the possibility of “the Donald,” as a split among Republicans raises their prospects. In the same manner, Republicans cheer on Bernie Sanders, because he might do the same to Democrats. Both are in the position to become spoilers or king-makers. Which will it be?

When Obama took office, his first phone call to a foreign leader was to the head of a terrorist group.

“This is my first phone call to a foreign leader,” Obama told the PLO’s Abbas. “And I’m making it only hours after I took office.”

Obama repeatedly bent, twisted and mutilated existing laws to keep the money flowing to the PLO’s Palestinian Authority. When Hamas and the PLO temporarily reconciled, Obama sent them money anyway. When Congress froze aid after the PLO defied the peace process by trying to join the UN, he signed a waiver claiming that aiding the terrorist network was “important to the security interests of the United States.” Earlier this year, when the PLO went after Israel at the International Criminal Court, Obama defied a Congressional law and bipartisan demands mandating a cutoff of aid.

If Abbas personally flew a plane into the new World Trade Center, Obama would find some excuse to keep the money coming to his terrorist group anyway. But now his determination to aid terrorists has hit a new low as he sides with terrorists against terror victims.

Eleven years ago, ten families who had suffered at the hands of the Muslim terror network filed a lawsuit against the PLO, Arafat and assorted PLO/PA officials. The American families suing the terrorists included Jamie Sokolow whose eye was damaged by shrapnel in the Jaffa Street bombing that injured 100 people and killed a 81-year-old amateur painter who had been out shopping for painting supplies.

“I’m 12 years old, I’m from New York, and I’m going to die,” she recollected in court thirteen years later.

Shayna Gould was a 19-year-old college student waiting at a Jerusalem bus stop in the rain when a PLO terrorist opened fire. She had no life signs when she arrived at the hospital.

Janis Coulter was killed when a PLO terrorist set off a bomb in the Frank Sinatra cafeteria at Hebrew University. Her family has been fighting for justice for a long time.

Dr. Alan Bauer was walking down the street with his 7-year-old son when a PLO terrorist set off a bomb in the French Hill bus station. “I couldn’t find my son. I then saw him face down. I picked him up and heard him moaning, so I knew he was alive,” he said.

A screw had torn through his son’s brain. “He was put in coma to let fluid drain out and was then left blind and paralyzed on his left side.”

Some of the killers were part of the “police force” armed and trained by the Clinton administration. They were dispatched by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which is listed as a terrorist group even though it’s part of the PLO network whose regime in the West Bank is funded by the United States.

Finally the families won their case in court. A jury found the PLO/PA guilty and ordered the terrorist network to pay $218 million to the families. The Antiterrorism Act tripled that award. The PLO appealed, but the terror group was required to post a bond to show that it was willing to pay the judgment.

Edward B. Murray, the mayor of one of the most politically progressive cities in America — Seattle — wants to make it easier for the 30,000 practicing Muslims in his city to get home mortgages without violating religious Sharia law. It is part of his plan to ease what he says is a “housing crisis.”

A new company in Seattle wants to help that happen, along with allowing Muslims to invest in retirement plans without violating Sharia law.

But conservatives have been warning for years that doing business with Islam is the same as doing business with terrorists, and a Seattle radio talk show host wonders why progressives favor Muslims over Christians.

Seattle’s economy is booming. That is good. What is bad, as Mayor Murray described in a letter to his constituents, is housing prices and rents have skyrocketed.

“As a result, thousands of families and workers — particularly lower-income people and among communities of color — are unable to afford the cost of living in Seattle,” he wrote.

Here’s his fix: Murray announced a multi-pronged approach to get 50,000 new units of housing built or preserved over the next 10 years, with 20,000 of those homes set up as “affordable housing.”

America’s status as the greatest and most influential nation on earth comes with certain inescapable realities. Among these are an abundance of enemies wishing to undermine us, numerous allies dependent on our strength and constancy, and the burden of knowing that every choice we make in exercising our power—even when we choose not to exercise it at all—has tremendous human and geopolitical consequences.

This has been true for at least 70 years, but never more so than today. As the world has grown more interconnected, American leadership has grown more critical to maintaining global order and defending our people’s interests, and as our economy has turned from national to international, domestic policy and foreign policy have become inseparable.

President Barack Obama has failed to recognize this. He entered office believing the United States was too engaged in too many places and that globalization had diminished the need for American power. He set to work peeling back the protective cover of American influence, stranding our allies, and deferring to the whims of nefarious regional powers. He has vacillated between leading recklessly and not leading at all, which has left the world more dangerous and America’s interests less secure.
It will take years for our next president to confront the residual effects of President Obama’s foreign and defense policies. Countering the spread of the self-declared Islamic State, for example, will require a broadened coalition of regional partners, increased U.S. involvement in the fight, and steady action to prevent the group’s expansion to other failed and failing states. Halting Iran’s regional expansionism and preventing its acquisition of a nuclear weapon will demand equal urgency and care.

While the clown car that is the Donald Trump campaign continues to careen around the stage, drawing outsize media attention, the serious candidates for the Republican nomination are putting forward serious proposals that deserve more serious consideration than they are getting. Just in the last few days, Jeb Bush has given a substantive speech on how he would handle Syria and Iraq, and Foreign Affairs published a substantive article by Marco Rubio articulating his broad foreign policy vision. (Full disclosure: I have advised both candidates on foreign policy.)

The attention devoted to Bush’s speech yesterday at the Reagan library has focused mainly on his criticisms of Hillary Clinton’s record on Iraq. I addressed that issue in a separate blog post. But what’s worth stressing is that this was only a short passage in a much meatier speech that laid out concrete proposals for addressing the problems of Iraq and Syria in a way that Clinton has not yet done.

On Iraq, Bush called for doing more to support not only the Iraqi Security Forces but also the Sunni tribes and Kurdish Peshmerga. He also called for sending tactical air controllers to call in air strikes and allowing our advisers to embed with Iraqi military personnel on operations in the way that Canadian Special Forces already do. He did not spell out exactly how much of a troop commitment he would make to Iraq, but he did say “more may well be needed” (beyond the 3,500 already there), even if he also said, “We do not need, and our friends do not ask for, a major commitment of American combat forces.”

On Syria, he called for expanded efforts to train and equip moderate rebels, creating “multiple safe zones,” and a no-fly zone. The last point is especially important. Bush spelled out the importance of a no-fly zone: “Enforce that no-fly zone, and we’ll stop the regime’s bombing raids that kill helpless civilians. It could also keep Iranian flights from resupplying the regime, Hizballah, and other bad actors. A no-fly zone is a critical strategic step to cut off Assad, counter Iranian influence, keep the pressure on for a settlement, and prevent more needless death in a country that has seen so much of it.” Those arguments are strong ones, but even though a no-fly zone has been on the drawing board of years, Obama has never pulled the trigger. Bush said he would. That’s an important commitment.

Jeb Bush caused some consternation among Democrats by suggesting that Hillary Clinton bears some of the blame for the dire situation that Iraq finds itself in today. In a larger foreign policy speech at the Reagan Library, Bush said:

“So why was the success of the surge followed by a withdrawal from Iraq, leaving not even the residual force that commanders and the joint chiefs knew was necessary? That premature withdrawal was the fatal error, creating the void that ISIS moved in to fill – and that Iran has exploited to the full as well. ISIS grew while the United States disengaged from the Middle East and ignored the threat. And where was Secretary of State Clinton in all of this? Like the president himself, she had opposed the surge, then joined in claiming credit for its success, then stood by as that hard-won victory by American and allied forces was thrown away. In all her record-setting travels, she stopped by Iraq exactly one time.”

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) renewed his call for the Employee Free Choice Act, which would “make it easier for workers to join unions.”

“There are millions of workers in this country, not everyone, but millions of workers who want to join a union but are unable to do so because suddenly and mysteriously a worker active in the organizing effort suddenly gets fired because she was late three years ago and we understand that employers take people into propaganda sessions,” Sanders said at a Oakland, Calif., rally held by National Nurses United, a union that endorsed Sanders.

“We understand that employers threaten workers. ‘You want a union? Good. You form a union, we’re shutting down here and we’re going to China.’ We understand that it is not uncommon that when workers in fact go through all of these hoops and form a union and negotiate a first contract, employers refuse to sit down and honestly negotiate that contract,” he added.

Sanders said the Employee Free Choice Act, originally introduced in 2009, is a simple bill.

Two people were killed at an IKEA in Sweden by an assailant. Due to Sweden’s abysmally weak knife control laws, the killer was able to murder both of them with an unregistered blade.

A man and a woman were killed and a third injured in a knife attack at an IKEA store in the Swedish city of Vasteras on Monday and two suspects were arrested, police said.

While Sweden has strict gun control laws, it has no knife control legislation.

The candidate has taken to maligning opponents’ motives—but 57% of voters don’t trust her.

President Obama came into office promising to unify America, but he has made political discourse meaner and more cynical. Whenever Mr. Obama is playing a weak hand, he questions the motivations of those who disagree with him and mangles the truth to undermine any criticism.

Take the president’s recent statement that Republican opponents of his nuclear deal with Iran are making “common cause” with hard-liners in Tehran who chant “Death to America.” Or consider his warnings that those opposed to the deal are “big check writers to political campaigns” and “the same array of forces that got us into the Iraq war”—a charge that borders on thinly veiled anti-Semitism.

The EPA’s new anticarbon rule is full of redistribution to offset its harm to the poor.

President Obama says that critics of his plan to decarbonize the economy are “the special interests and their allies in Congress” repeating “the same stale arguments” about “killing jobs and businesses and freedom.” He adds that “even more cynical, we’ve got critics of this plan who are actually claiming that this will harm minority and low-income communities.”

Is he thinking of critics who work at the Environmental Protection Agency? Perhaps so, because multiple new antipoverty transfer programs are built into the EPA’s new Clean Power Plan. The fine print is there, for anyone who cares to look, 1,317 pages into the rule’s 1,560-page preamble.