RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.wsj.com/articles/in-defense-of-snooping-1456184621 EXCERPTS FOR FULL REVIEW GO TO SITE

“Playing to the Edge” offers a full excursion through the contemporary challenges facing American intelligence, including cyber warfare, Russian aggression, and armed conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq. But it also presents an intimate personal portrait—an account of how its author came to be the man he is, someone who entered the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps while in college in the late 1960s, who reveres his hometown of Pittsburgh (and its Steelers), and who prays weekly in church for the souls of his twin sisters, who died at birth when he was a boy of 10.

The lesson that Gen. Hayden takes from the Syrian affair is sobering. “We chalked this one up as intelligence success, after a fashion,” he writes. But he strongly intimates that it was really Israel’s success—and America’s failure. More broadly, he says, Syrian behavior “went beyond our understanding.” Extrapolating from this mixed record, Gen Hayden is pessimistic that American intelligence will fare well in tracking covert Iranian nuclear activity. If his pessimism is well-founded—and there are few people more qualified to judge—the surprise we experienced on 9/11 may be a prelude to a catastrophe of far greater dimensions.

“The radical transformation of America continues thank to all of you who voted for me, but above all, I want to thank the befuddled voters who abetted, enabled, and supported Donald Trump. I could not have won without you.”

I ask on behalf of Raul Castro–because Barack Obama seems infatuated with him. Seems that every time the Stalinist terror-sponsoring dictator (who craved to nuke the U.S.) looks over his shoulder, there’s the President of the U.S. making goo-goo eyes at him.

“People characterized as stalkers,” explains Wikipedia, “may be accused of having a mistaken belief that another person loves them (erotomania) or that they need rescuing.”

As announced just yesterday by his spokespersons, the possible “erotomaniac” twice elected U.S. President even found a way to get himself invited to his stalk victim’s fiefdom. Yes, President Obama will visit Cuba next month. The meet-up is scheduled for March 21st.

There’s a famous scene in the movie Scarface where the late actor Robert Loggia makes an urgent request of Cuban gangster Tony “Scarface” Montana. I’m betting that Robert Loggia will look gallant, powerful and dignified in front of the Cuban shown in that scene compared to Obama in front of the Cuban he’ll visit next month. See here for details.

I say “stalker” because Obama’s meet-up and handshake (warm abrazos too, perhaps?) with Raul Castro next month will mark the fourth such meet-up between Obama and Castro in 26 months. FDR and Churchill certainly matched this frequency and timeline for chummy handshakes. But have any other U.S. Presidents matched it with foreign “leaders”?

“Funnier” still, when Benjamin Netanyahu−president of a “close U.S. ally”−supposedly visited Capitol Hill, in Feb. 2015, Obama pointedly snubbed him. But when it came to the terror-sponsor who craved to nuke his nation, who burglarized, tortured and murdered U.S. citizens without the slightest remorse–when it comes to the unrepentant Stalinist Raul Castro−U.S. president Obama somehow found a way to buttonhole and shake hands with him, everyplace, from Johannesburg South Africa, to Panama City, Panama, to New York City. Film clips of this “bromance” here.

President Obama will be visiting Cuba in March.

I guess that he needs to go to a place where people will be happy to see him.

Frankly, there aren’t too many of those places left in the U.S.: his job approval is 45% in the RCP average of polls. A whopping 63% believe that the country is in the wrong track. Only 38% approve of how he is handling foreign policy.

So let’s go to Havana and let Raul Castro stage a nice welcome party. He will close the government offices and fill the streets with Cubans.

Let’s hope that President Obama finally calls for change in Cuba rather than play the role of Raul’s new American friend. He will be speaking to a skeptical Cuban audience who thought that “los Americanos” would bring prosperity and change. So far, the only thing that most Cubans have seen is repression and more of it.

He should start by calling for multiparty elections in Cuba, as Roger Noriega said “Let the Cubans vote”:

“Let Cubans vote.” Those three words, spoken by President Obama on his planned trip to Cuba, could unite all Americans — including those Americans in neighboring countries — behind a worthy cause. Will a man elected promising “hope and change” advance those objectives in a country where they are genuinely needed?

We shouldn’t have to ask.

The president’s visit to Cuba comes as the winds of change have shifted toward freedom, away from the authoritarian populism promoted by the Castro brothers for 60 years. Voters in Argentina recently elected a pro-free-market conservative who has pledged to seek a positive relationship with the United States. In December, Venezuela’s democrats won congressional elections in a landslide and now represent a majority that opposes the Cuban-backed regime that has brought the country to political and economic ruin.

This is a column posted by someone named “bookworm”….my sentiments expressed perfectly….rsk
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/02/turning_against_trump.html
Dear Trump supporters: There was no shame in your offering him your support in 2015 when he appeared as a brave, fun, and energetic conservative. Now, though, there’s no shame in your backing away from that support in the face of new information showing he’s not the man you thought he was.

People who pride themselves on rational thinking know there are few feelings worse than being wrong about something, especially something that they made a big noise about at the time. What helps lessen this intellectual humiliation is understanding that, given the information available at the time, the decision was a rational one at the time. The remedy for the initial error is to use the newly available information to reach a more reasoned decision.

As the campaign season goes forward, we’re learning more about Donald Trump’s politics and seeing his initial ebullient puckishness too often give way to self-referential arrogance and venomous hubris. Now is a good time for Trump supporters to use this new information to revisit their original conclusion about him and to realize, with no shame attached, that he’s not the candidate they thought he was.

When Trump first appeared on the 2015 political scene, he was a breath of fresh air. Most conservatives enjoyed his irreverence in tweaking the media rules favoring Progressives and demonizing conservatives — rules before which Republicans had long bowed down. It was galvanizing to hear Trump state in plain English that we need to address the holes in immigration that allow Islamic terrorists easy entry, even if doing so meant temporarily stopping all Muslim immigration until we figure out how to separate the moderate wheat from the murderous chaff.

Likewise, Hillary’s opponents enjoyed his refusal to allow Hillary’s double-X chromosomes to stifle the fact that the only woman Hillary supports is Hillary. To that end, she enabled her husband’s predatory, misogynistic sexual misbehavior for more than thirty years. Trump was the first Republican to remind everyone how appalling and hypocritical Hillary’s behavior has been.

Early on, Trump was loud about conservative positions: Securing our borders; supporting Israel; ending the abortion culture, and protecting Second Amendment rights. It therefore seemed as if the dream conservative candidate was presenting himself. Here was a man who bulldozed the political correctness that stifles conservative thought and who openly, and in simple language, embraced conservative positions. Based upon that information, it was eminently reasonable to support Donald Trump.

The media also encouraged Trump’s candidacy. He was good for ratings and they considered him un-electable. Given the media’s overwhelming progressive bias, they wanted to advance a Republican candidate they were sure would lose. They therefore gave him 25 times more coverage than the rest of the GOP field combined. That’s a lot of free advertising in a nation that appreciates colorful characters.

For months, then, for someone bewildered by the exceptionally crowded Republican field, Trump seemed like the answer to seven years of Obama’s efforts to turn America into another saggy, flabby semi-socialist country; to hand the Middle East over to Putin; and to tear down our national security by destroying America’s borders and having our military focus obsessively on climate change and social re-engineering.

That was then. This is now. Now the opposition research is finally coming to light, and it seems that Trump (shame on him, not shame on you) has been lying to America’s conservatives. Up until he threw himself into this election cycle, Trump was the very model of a modern elite Progressive. Moreover, as the campaign progresses, his current statements give the lie to his past promises.

These three representatives recently visited Israel, but they did not just go to the politically “safe” areas- they went to the West Bank to Hebron the ancient capital of the Jewish people and the cradle of the Jewish faith. rsk

Congressman Jeff Miller R- Florida District 1 https://jeffmiller.house.gov/

•Rated -5 by AAI, indicating a anti-Arab anti-Palestine voting record.

Congressman Greg Harper of Mississippi R- Missisipi District 3 http://harper.house.gov/

•Rated -3 by AAI, indicating a anti-Arab anti-Palestine voting record.

Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler R- Missouri District 4 https://hartzler.house.gov/

•Rated -6 by AAI, indicating a anti-Arab anti-Palestine voting record. (May 2012)

Oh, to have been at John Kerry’s meeting Tuesday with a dozen Hollywood executives at Universal Studios. To have sat in one of the cushy leather chairs beneath a vintage poster for The Phantom of the Opera, sipping bottled water, relaxing in the Mediterranean climate of southern California, and been solicited by the U.S. secretary of state for advice on how to defeat radical Islam. What a confirmation of one’s status in the film industry, of one’s place in the global economy, of one’s importance to the Democratic party. “Great convo w studio execs in LA,” Kerry tweeted after the discussion, “Good to hear their perspectives & ideas of how to counter #Daesh narrative.”

If there is one thing we know about Hollywood executives, it is that they are full of perspectives, have plenty of ideas. You need to tell our story, Mr. Secretary. Fix the plot point in Act Two. The tweets we are sending to convince young Muslim men not to join the Caliphate — do they have character arcs? Are they bankable? We can work with the Chinese on this; they keep telling Jeffrey about their problem with the Uighurs. Perhaps we could enlist actors to speak out against ISIS. A public service announcement, with Hillary Swank gazing sadly into the camera — that might make Ahad al Islam think twice about taking a Yazidi sex slave. Or have Steven Spielberg direct a short film on American efforts to combat Islamophobia. We can get Kushner to write it: “Allah in America”! It won’t be anything big, just 10 or 20 minutes long. A cost effective plan, if we can leverage viral propagation. I know George Clooney will be interested. When we stopped by the villa after Cannes last year Amal said something about how terrible it is, the killing. And it is terrible, awful. And the refugees: We can partner with Go Pro. Give them cameras to tell their stories. We’ll edit them here, in one of our studio bays, and release them via Youtube. They’ll become memes. And the memes can link back to the State Department homepage about all you and the president are doing to show that ISIS has nothing whatsoever to do with Islam. No we missed Davos this year because we were getting ready for Sundance. But anyway we have to be sure not to offend anyone. That would be the worst. That would just play into ISIS’s hands. Can you believe what Donald Trump said? Terrible. Sets us back. By the way Mr. Secretary my nephew is a junior at Tufts and is just soooo interested in foreign policy. He wants to write his thesis on the Israel Lobby and would just die if he could intern in your office this summer. Yes, Sam, that is his name — you met him windsurfing in Nantucket last summer — you remember him! Well, he’s just so proud of you. We are all just so proud of you. Of course that’s a brilliant idea: a movie about a government official standing up for diplomacy in the face of bitter opposition from the warmongers at home and abroad. About a man who’s been trying to do the right thing ever since he went to war and saw America lose her sense of morality, and who’s been trying to get it back for her. That’s, well, that’s beautiful. We could get James Cromwell to star. Who wrote it? You? Sure, I’d love to take a look.

Never has an “art film” been so mismatched with its Manhattan venues as “The Witch” at the two popular multiplexes where it can be seen. This is a very small movie, dark both literally and metaphorically, difficult to hear and even more difficult to comprehend both literally and metaphorically. Most of the scenes are shot in obscure and candle-lit interiors; most of the dialogue is either muffled, whispered or foreign-sounding enough for American audiences to have benefited greatly had there been sub-titles. We are in the 17th century with a Puritan family that has been banished from the community plantation for the father’s sin of being prideful and apparently holier than thou. The father is determined to create his own farm at the edge of the woods and since we have already been told that this is a New England folk tale, we know what that portends.

The best scene in the movie occurs very soon after as the blossoming teenage daughter cares for her infant brother; it is genuinely moving, startling and very well done. It sets into motion the rest of the plot which involves calamitous events leading to the mother’s breakdown, the father’s well-intentioned duplicity, the older son’s precipitous coming of age, the younger twins’ taunting of their older sister leading to serious accusations with forseeable and hallucinatory consequences. One reviewer compared this movie to ”The White Ribbon” where the authoritarian nature of German family life and education become a stand-in and precursor for the larger societal implications of obedience to Nazism. In that movie, the metaphoric stretch is clear. What comes through most aggressively in this movie is the zero tolerance that the director shows for religious “fanaticism” which is mostly evident in the family praying together or having a fast day. The children are not lashed for their misdeeds nor does the father seem unmindful of their needs or those of his increasingly grief-stricken wife. His major sin seems to be his abiding belief in God and the devil. The most disturbing scenes in this “horror movie” are filmed so that we have trouble understanding what we’re seeing initially and once the action does come into focus, it’s abruptly over. Both involve pagan rituals with mutilation of children and animals, lots of blood and naked bodies – the work of the devil.

Obama’s War Promises have been easier to make than to keep.

Striking the right balance between justice and security remains the most neuralgic point in American politics. Campaigning for the White House in 2008, Barack Obama insisted that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney had gotten it badly wrong: They were trampling on civil liberties with torture, warrantless surveillance, and blanket secrecy, while at the same time violating duly enacted statutes, even the Constitution. Obama was determined to set things right.

How well has he succeeded? That is the question the New York Times reporter Charlie Savage attempts to answer in this comprehensive account of the fierce legal battles within the Obama administration over counterterrorism policy and matters of war and peace. As Savage tells the story, Obama began his presidential tenure with grand promises: He vowed to end two wars, ban torture, close Guantánamo within a year, and run the most transparent administration in American history. But as the new president was soon to discover, talking about change was easier than bringing it about.

Within weeks of assuming office, writes Savage, Obama “had already started to assemble an ambiguous record” in dismantling policies of his predecessor that he had declared illegal, immoral, and unwise. Though he banned torture, his new CIA chief was defending the practice of “extraordinary rendition,” shipping captives off to countries where, despite diplomatic assurances, they might be subjected to less-than-tender methods of interrogation. He retained military commissions for trying terror suspects, promising only to review their rules. His Justice Department was invoking the state secrets privilege to toss lawsuits out of court, including those involving torture and warrantless surveillance.

Writing for the Times early in Obama’s first term, Savage reported that “the Obama administration is quietly signaling continued support for .  .  . major elements of its predecessor’s approach to fighting al Qaeda.” Thanks to that story and a flurry of others like it, civil libertarians and liberal pundits began to squawk about backsliding and betrayal. On the other side of the political divide, supporters of George W. Bush’s counter-terrorism measures began to crow, charging hypocrisy and claiming vindication. Whether the incoming fire was launched from left or right, it plainly hit its target in the White House: “We are charting a new way forward,” insisted a top Obama aide to Savage. But the reality suggested otherwise.

A foiled terror attack on Christmas Day 2009 made jettisoning Bush’s counter-terrorism toolkit a dangerous proposition. Flying aboard an airliner into Detroit, a Nigerian follower of al Qaeda attempted to set off a bomb hidden in his underwear. When it fizzled instead of detonating, passengers were spared a calamity—but the White House was not. Janet Napolitano, in charge of the Department of Homeland Security, elicited derision with her nonreassuring assurance to the public that the “system worked.” It plainly had not worked; only dumb luck and the quick action of Abdulmutallab’s seatmates had saved the day. But Obama did not allow the episode to interrupt his Hawaii vacation. Instead of heading back to Washington, he set off to the Kaneohe oceanfront to play golf. Conservatives were outraged. The public was alarmed.

Under the pressure of politics at home and terror threats abroad, writes Savage, “the reformist side of Obama’s national security legal policy was starting to crack.” Out was transparency about counterterrorism surveillance. Out was the plan to try 9/11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a Manhattan courtroom. Out was the promised closure of Guantánamo within a year. In was intensified drone warfare. In were more secrets about key decisions. In were leak prosecutions when state secrets got out.