RUTHFULLY YOURS

Mrs. Clinton agrees income inequality is a problem and then explains why it’s not.

Media reaction to this week’s Hillary Clinton interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel has focused on her humorous claims of poverty at the time she and husband Bill left the White House. But perhaps most interesting are Mrs. Clinton’s thoughts on Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century.”
The nearly 700-page screed against income inequality has become the Bible of the political left, even though hardly anyone reads it. (University of Wisconsin math professor Jordan Ellenberg recently used e-book usage data to proclaim Piketty’s tome “the summer’s most unread book.”)

It’s good people aren’t wasting their time, for as Martin Feldstein noted in these pages, Mr. Piketty’s thesis rests on “a flawed interpretation of U.S. income-tax data, and a misunderstanding of the current nature of household wealth.”

But despite the book’s failure to advance public understanding of economics or to command reader attention, it remains a political powerhouse. And that’s why Mrs. Clinton’s comments on Mr. Piketty’s ideas are significant.

In the Spiegel interview, Mrs. Clinton at first agrees that income inequality is “threatening democracy.” But when pressed on the subject of her own gargantuan compensation, she goes in another direction:

“SPIEGEL: The average annual income of an American household is $43,810… You earn up to $200,000 an hour for a speech. Can you understand if people are bothered by that?

“Clinton: Well, certainly, I can understand that, but that’s never been the crux of the concern in our country, because we’ve always had people who did better than other people. That’s just accepted. The problem is that people on the bottom and people in the middle class no longer feel like they have the opportunity to do better. The question is, how do we get back to having an economy that works for everybody and that once again gives people the optimism that they too will be successful.”

The war that is wreaking havoc in Syria and Iraq, the carnage that Bashar al-Assad is perpetrating against his own people, the proclamation of an Islamist caliphate by an ultra-fanatic terrorist organisation with expansionist designs, Iran’s badly-hidden designs to develop the nuclear weapon, and the frustration of the Arab-Muslim populations with their rulers, have profoundly altered the geopolitical power game in the Middle East.

In the new setup, scapegoating Israel for the region’s woes is no longer the handy, catch-all device that, for several decades, it used to be.

For starters, a number of enemies of Israel – whether governments or terrorist organisations – are deeply engaged in a bloody Shiite vs Sunni inter-sectarian fighting in which Israel-bashing is of little or no use.

Furthermore, the military advances of the terrorist organisation Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (Isis), and its control of large swathes of Iraq and Northern Syria, concentrates the attention of global and regional players. A wide range of governments in the Middle East – some more than others – fret about the intention of Isis to redraw in its favor the geopolitical landscape of the region.

Isis may not be able to maintain its territorial gains for long. Its military victories may collapse as swiftly as they were achieved. But the menace that it represents for the stability of the Middle East will not disappear any time soon.

Threatened by that Damocles sword, some of the region’s regimes, among the moderate ones, may be tempted to seek or accept the cooperation of Israel in their fight against that common enemy. As regards Iran’s nuclear-weaponizing intentions, rumour has it that talks are underway between Saudi Arabia and Israel on how to deal with that danger.

This helps understand the statement made by Israel’s Foreign Minister, Avigdor Liberman, indicating that “Today, there is a basis for the creation of a new diplomatic-political structure in the Middle East”.

The Palestinian leadership can hardly be delighted with these developments. Add to this the fact that demonising Israel – as governments of the region lavishly used to do in order to divert international and domestic attention away from their own failures – has ceased to arouse the support it mobilised in the past.

And the proof of the pudding is in the eating: the “flotillas to Gaza”, which anti-Israel militants organised three summers in a row, have faded away. What is intriguing, and raises questions about the inner motives of the sponsors of those convoys, is the fact that no flotilla has been dispatched to the rescue of Syria’s civil population.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Four years into the shale revolution, the U.S. is on track to pass Russia and Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest producer of crude oil, most analysts agree. When that happens and by how much, though, has produced disparate estimates that depend on uncertain factors ranging from progress in drilling technology to the availability of financing and the price of oil itself.

Forecasts for U.S. shale oil production vary from an increase of 7.5 million barrels per day by 2020 – almost doubling current domestic output of 8.5 bpd — to a gain of 1.5 million bpd, or less than half of what Iraq now produces.

The disparities are a function of the novelty of the shale boom, which has consistently confounded forecasts. In 2012, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimated that production from eight selected shale oil fields would range from 700,000 bpd of so-called tight oil to 2.8 million bpd by 2035. A year later, those predictions had been surpassed.

“The key issue is not whether production grows, it’s by how much,” said Ed Morse, global head of commodities research at Citigroup in New York. “We’re only at the beginning of the first inning and this is a nine-inning game.”

The stakes couldn’t be bigger, ranging from the multibillion-dollar investments needed to explore and drill to oil supply issues that go to the heart of U.S. foreign policy. Relations with countries ranging from Iraq and Iran to Russia, Ukraine, Libya and Venezuela are colored to one degree or another by the question of energy.

The U.S., a nation transformed by the 1973 Arab oil embargo, could become energy independent by 2035, according to bullish forecasts from BP Plc and the International Energy Agency. Coupled with growing output from oil-rich neighbors, the continent has a growing shield from supply shocks.

“Looking at North America, including Canada and Mexico, we’re much more politically stable,” said Lisa Viscidi, program director of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington.

Still, many drillers have found that healthy forecasts of oil in the ground don’t guarantee it can be economically extracted.

Fatah has several hundred militiamen in the Gaza Strip, some of whom are members of the Palestinian Authority security forces, who continue to receive their salaries from Western governments.

At least two Fatah armed groups announced that they had started firing rockets at the “settlements” of Ashkelon and Sderot, cities inside the pre-1967 borders of Israel, with another Fatah group claiming responsibility for firing 35 rockets into Israel since Sunday.

So far as Abbas is concerned, “it all started when Israel fired back” in response to hundred of rockets fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip during the last few days. He seems concerned that if the world hears about the role of Fatah in the rocket attacks, the news will affect Western financial aid to the Palestinian Authority, which dominated by Fatah.

Palestinian Authority President and Fatah head Mahmoud Abbas on Monday called for an “immediate cessation” of Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip.

But Abbas stopped short of calling for an end to rocket attacks on Israel, an omission of what triggered the current round of fighting.

Instead of calling on his partners in the “national consensus” government — Hamas — to stop their rocket attacks on Israel, Abbas appealed to the international community to “intervene” to stop the Israeli “escalation.”

So as far as Abbas is concerned, “it all started when Israel fired back” in response to hundreds of rockets that were fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip during the past few days.

Why did Abbas refrain from condemning or calling for an end to the rocket attacks?

First, Abbas does not want to anger Hamas by issuing a condemnation of its rocket attacks. Such a condemnation would certainly lead to the collapse of the “reconciliation accord” that his Fatah faction signed with the Islamist movement last April.

Video: Jamie Glazov on Obama’s Islamist Odyssey
Frontpage’s Editor explains why a Radical-in-Chief romances America’s deadliest enemies.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/video-jamie-glazov-on-obamas-islamist-odyssey/

Over 100 rockets have been fired at Israel in the last 24 hours, some of ‎them aimed at Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and even Haifa in the north (to believe ‎Hamas spokesmen). But not to worry, since at this week’s Haaretz Conference on Peace‎in Tel Aviv (kudos to the newspaper for its great timing), the biggest concern has ‎not been that most of populated Israel had become a free-fire zone for Hamas. The ‎big story at the event is that Economy Minister Naftali Bennett was invited and had the gall to ‎show up, which led to angry cries of “murderer” and “fascist” from audience members, ‎and ended with the minister being punched in the back by one of the peace-loving Israelis in ‎attendance.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas made his remarks to the ‎conference in a prerecorded interview. Had he appeared in person, it is unlikely that any of the attendees ‎would have questioned him about the peace-loving bona fides of his new coalition ‎partner, Hamas. This crowd knows why there are ‎kidnappings and rocket launches. These are, of course, a result of the Israeli ‎occupation of the West Bank and the rapid and extensive growth of settlements. ‎Gaza, of course, has not had an IDF presence or settlers for ‎almost a decade, but strangely, tens of thousands of rockets have still been fired at ‎Israel since the withdrawal from Gaza. One might almost think that there had to be ‎another reason for Hamas’ violent behavior.

Fortunately, for conference attendees, the likes of thoughtful and open-minded ‎analysts such as Peter Beinart and J Street’s Jeremy Ben-Ami will be able to direct ‎the conference back to Israel’s original and now continuing sin. For peace is always ‎at hand, if only Israel would reach out its hand in peace to its always willing ‎Palestinian partner, who wants nothing more than to live “side by side in peace” in ‎two states, Palestine and Israel.

U.S. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry ‎have sung this kumbayah tune, and no event or reality on the ground will change ‎the music. There may even be Hamas “technocrats,” and members of the political ‎wing of this eliminationist group who would welcome a chance to play at being ‎peaceful, and sing and dance with their fellow attendees and think sweet thoughts ‎of Pete Seeger. Incredibly, there are Israelis, though they are a diminishing breed, ‎who cling to this nonsense and may even subscribe to and read Haaretz religiously.

In the meantime, back on Planet Israel, a substantial portion of the population is ‎now in bomb-shelter territory. Israel has stepped up its airstrikes in Gaza, but so ‎far it has only led to an increase in the number of rockets fired, and an expansion ‎of the geographic area susceptible to such fire. The calls from the international ‎community for restraint are already omnipresent, and while ostensibly directed at ‎both Israel and Hamas, are of course really directed only at Israel, since no outside ‎party has any real leverage on Hamas at this point. The need for restraint goes ‎hand in hand with the condemnation and disappointment with the “cycle of ‎violence” underway, something that presumably just ignited on its own (why ‎did those three boys allow themselves to get kidnapped and killed?). ‎

The United States Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. that if you like your God, you can keep your God, even if you run a business.

The Obama administration tried to require that health plans provided at work cover contraception and morning-after pills, no matter what an employer’s religious convictions.

The Green family, owners of Hobby Lobby craft stores and a chain of Christian bookstores, provide insurance but refuse to cover morning-after pills such as Plan B and Ella, because these drugs violate their religious principles.

The Obama administration insists that saving women $35 for the Ella pill outweighs protecting an employer’s religious liberty.

Democratic politicians hyped this battle as Armageddon for women’s reproductive rights. Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser to the president, fanned the flames, accusing employers of “trying to take this right away from women.”

Nineteen U.S. senators and 91 members of the House of Representatives, all Democrats, filed briefs supporting Obama’s legal war against Hobby Lobby. Sens. Patty Murray and Barbara Boxer said the outcome would decide “whether a CEO’s personal beliefs can trump a woman’s right to access free or low-cost contraception under the Affordable Care Act.”

Nonsense. Women have a constitutional right to use birth control, but there is no “right” to get it at work. Nor does the Affordable Care Act guarantee that health plans cover it. ObamaCare would not have passed with such a guarantee.

Section 2713 of ObamaCare requires plans to cover services that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force rates as A or B. Birth control didn’t make the list. The law also gives the Health and Human Services secretary – a presidential appointee – discretion to add other requirements, and then-Secretary Kathleen Sebelius did. (The next administration could undo that.)

Shockingly, Justice Elena Kagan declared during oral arguments on March 25: “Congress has made a judgment and Congress has given a statutory entitlement, and that entitlement is to women and includes contraceptive coverage.”

Wrong, Justice Kagan. Did you forego reading the law, like most members of Congress?

Above all, God bless the boys going up against Hamas and into Gaza by air, land and sea. Bibi said it’s “time to take off the gloves” so once again Israel is at war.

This is not the time to remind Israel’s politicians “we told you so” when you gave up Gaza in 2005.

Nor is this the time to blame successive Israeli governments for letting it get this far, far enough to allow this implacable foe to arm itself to the teeth.

For the moment Israel must deal with the unbearable barrage of rocket fire coming in ceaselessly from Gaza. Now it’s time to stop the bleeding.

Through Operation Protective Edge, the pride of the Jewish State has been mobilized to defuse the bombs and to subdue the enemy. The enemy is Hamas, which has given Israel not a moment’s rest. From the time these violent tribes of Sunni origin took over the Strip in 2007 they have hammered Israel with a million bombs meant to discomfort a million Israelis along the South.

For all those years, life along the South has been treacherous, a nightmare, for Israelis living along the border. In Jewish population centers like Ashdod (215,000) Ashkelon (120,000), Beersheva (197,000), Dimona (33,000), Eilat (47,000), Sderot (21,000) sirens wailed every day and parents huddled with their children in bomb shelters.

They complained to the government – how can this be happening in a Land we call our own? Please make this stop.

My friends in Eilat ask me, “Can you do something from America? Do people know what’s going on? Would any country besides Israel stand for this?”

It hurts to tell them that America and the rest of the world would only demand of Israel that it exercise “restraint.” We heard this again, as recently as yesterday, and again we heard that this “cycle of violence” must stop and that “both sides” should proceed with caution.

The problem with going to war is you really have to win it definitively. If you don’t, it will come back and bite you in the leg — or worse.

The USA should have learned that from World War II when we, and our allies, completely annihilated the Nazis and the Japanese and Germany and Japan became decent modern democracies. We didn’t. Whether you supported them or not, whether they were the right ones or not, we ended up fighting all subsequent wars half-heartedly. The results are obvious.

America has gotten away, so far, barely, with this ambivalent approach to war because it is so powerful and so far away from the field of battle. (The rapid metastasis across Syria and Iraq of the Islamic State — aka ISIS — not to mention our own porous borders, may change that.)

Israel is in a different position. It fights for its survival surrounded by societies that despise it and are, by contemporary standards, hugely primitive and bordering on the insane, misogynistic, homophobic and everything else liberals are supposed to abhor. (I guess supporters of #BDS movement can stop reading here.) Nevertheless, Israel has fought its wars — even the ’67 war — American-style, holding off from finishing the job, because of its own scruples and because it was urged to “exercise restraint” by the U.S., Europe, Russia or the former Soviet Union.

Now things are different. We are in the Age of Obama when the thought of such an incompetent, failed president counseling anything, let alone restraint, is risible. And yet you can be sure he will within minutes of when Israel’s new operation against Hamas in Gaza shows even a glimmer of success.

I write this as sirens wail in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv [1], so let me cut to the chase. This time Israel should finish the job. Forget anything said by Obama and his equally incompetent secretary of State. Shine them on. Do anything you have to, but smash Hamas utterly.

Israel will be doing the world a favor, showing them how Islamic terrorists should be treated. The only horse they recognize, as Lee Smith [2] pointed out a while ago, is the strong one. That’s the unfortunate truth. Anyone who sees it otherwise at this point is lying to himself or others. How many more years of this do we need? How many more Gaza wars, Iraq wars, Syrian civil wars, Iranian (potential) nuclear wars, Sunni vs. Shiite wars, back-to-the-Middle Ages wars can civilization abide? Sooner or later, someone is going to have to yell “Ya, basta!”

Benjamin Netanyahu — over to you.

Israel keeps the peace? That may seem jarring since when Israel gets in the news—as in the current operation against Hamas terror in Gaza—it’s usually in connection to violence.

But in reality, as a democratic, Western-aligned country and the Middle East’s preeminent military power, Israel has done much over the decades to keep the region from being worse than it is. Israel has used its might—sometimes openly, sometimes discreetly—not only to safeguard its own interests but also those of the West and the more moderate Arab states.
1. Preventing a nuclear Iraq.

When Iraq came to the verge of going nuclear, it was Israel that stopped it.

In the 1970s, France—heavily pro-Arab and dependent on Arab oil—started helping Iraq build the Osirak nuclear reactor near Baghdad. By 1981, with Saddam Hussein in power, Israeli intelligence conveyed its grim findings to Jerusalem: Iraq, a sworn enemy of Israel, was aiming to build nuclear weapons at Osirak and was within a year of doing so.

Israel tried diplomacy with France and the U.S. With the former, it was no-go; Iraq was France’s main customer for weaponry, paying mainly in oil. As for the U.S., it agreed with Israel’s assessments but declined to act, possibly because Iraq was then fighting Iran [1].

So on June 7, 1981, under orders from Prime Minister Menachem Begin [2], the Israeli air force dispatched 14 F-15s and F-16s to Osirak. The planes flew low so that Iraq never detected them, and they reduced the reactor to ruins in a minute and 20 seconds.

The attack, of course, was universally condemned at the time. The U.S. suspended a shipment of planes to Israel. But in June 1991, visiting Israel after the Gulf War, then-Defense Secretary Richard Cheney gave General David Ivry, chief of the Israeli air force ten years earlier, his “thanks and appreciation for the outstanding job he did on the Iraqi nuclear program in 1981, which made our job much easier in Desert Storm.”

Desert Storm was a success, pushing Iraq out of Kuwait and maintaining relative order in the Middle East. Although further U.S. measures in Iraq are more debatable, at least they didn’t have to be carried out against a nuclear Iraq.
2. Preventing a nuclear Syria.

Syria is another Middle Eastern country you wouldn’t want to see with nuclear bombs. That, too, came close to happening and was prevented by Israel [3].

In late 2006 and early 2007, Israeli intelligence found out that North Korea was building a plutonium reactor for the Assad regime in northern Syria. The aim: to put together a nuclear bomb.

In April, Israel conveyed that finding to Washington. President Bush ordered an inquiry; U.S. intelligence said Israel was right.

The then Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, tried to convince the U.S. to attack, but Washington—already embroiled in Iraq—declined. Olmert told Bush that, in that case, Israel would do it. Olmert interpreted Bush’s reaction as a green light.

Shortly after midnight on September 6, 2007, Israeli planes dropped 17 tons of bombs on the reactor, putting an end to it. This time Israel kept mum, not officially acknowledging the operation (it hasn’t to this day), and criticism was more muted. Considering that, a few years later, the Assad regime showed itself quite capable of using chemical weapons against civilians, Israel again did the world a great favor.