RUTHFULLY YOURS

Most politicians change their positions for political purposes. Only one national politician routinely changes her own identity — her accents, her name, her personality and even her height — to become likeable enough to get elected. She is flailing and failing. What does it say about her view of us?

Hillary Clinton has capitalized on identity politics throughout her political career. The irony of her practice is that she has shifted and changed her own “identity” throughout her political career — a career that began during her years at Wellesley, if not before.

We are used to politicians “trimming” their positions and agendas to gain support. Recently, Chuck Todd showed Hillary Clinton a montage of her own flip-flops but all but the most principled politicians are contortionists. They respond to political polling and focus groups and electoral math. They never admit to this practice but they all do it to get elected. Normally, they credit themselves — and their backers join in — for having “evolved.” A lot of evolution seems to occur when one enters the political arena — it is a dog-eat-dog world where only the most electable survive and prosper.

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” begins the famous poem by Emma Lazarus emblazoned on the Statue of Liberty. When I was kid, it elicited a frog in my throat. The idea of it still does. But something’s gone wrong. Wildly wrong.

And what’s wrong isn’t so hard to figure out. Back in those days, and in the days before that, most of those coming to America wanted to assimilate into this burgeoning democratic society. Those that were having trouble, that were stuck in old-country ways, were known as “greenhorns” and worked hard to escape that pejorative, to become true Americans themselves. They wanted to be one of us, to live the dream together, win or lose.

These days, not so much.

These days — inspired by jingoism of nitwit ultra-nationalists like La Raza and amplified by our own cultural ambivalence — legal and illegal immigrants coming from south of the border often prefer to keep their allegiance to their home country. For many, perhaps most, Mexicans and Mexican-Americans Cinco de Mayo is their national holiday, not the Fourth of July. And heaven help Team USA when doing battle on the soccer field with Mexico.

Donald Trump flashed his non-interventionist foreign policy credentials on Sunday, staking out a firm position against establishment candidates who favor a more active role for the U.S. military in the Middle East.

On Meet the Press, Trump said that the Middle East would be a more stable place today if the dictators Saddam Hussein of Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi were still in power.

Trump mentioned the countries in comparison to current efforts to drive Syrian President Bashar al-Assad out of power.

“You can make the case, if you look at Libya, look at what we did there, it’s a mess,” Trump said on NBC.

“If you look at Saddam Hussein with Iraq, look what we did there, it’s a mess. It’s going to be the same thing” in Syria, he said.

Asked by NBC’s Chuck Todd if the Middle East would be more stable with Gaddafi and Saddam in power, Trump replied, “Of course it would be.”

Three things so far have saved Obama’s otherwise unfortunate tenure; all came over his own objections.

One, after the 2010 midterm tsunami, the newly elected House Republicans put a lid on spending — ratified by the wins of 2014. Sequestration is a crude blunderbuss and slashed defense, but it at least slowed down Obama’s disastrous serial $1 trillion-plus budget deficits. In spending terms, it certainly has vastly reduced the government’s share of GDP. We know that because Obama occasionally brags of falling deficits, as if to say, “Thank you for not letting me be entirely myself.” When he leaves office, we will have $20 trillion in debt and nearly 100 million permanently out of the work force, as well as uncontrolled and unaddressed entitlement spending on life support through zero-interest rates. But we will still be alive for now, thanks to sequestration. Shutting down the government may have been politically unwise (or not — given the 2014 midterm elections [1]), but it kept the debt financeable.

Then there is energy. Obama once bragged of sky-high electricity costs to come — echoed by Steven Chu’s dream [2] of European-level gas prices. Obama mocked “drill, baby, drill” and claimed it was no solution to the energy crisis, as he tabled Keystone and put millions of acres of federal lands de facto off the market for energy exploration. He tried to “bankrupt” the coal industry [3]. The EPA became a rogue agency [4]. Almost all his crony-capitalist Solyndra-like projects failed.

And? Gasoline and natural gas prices have plunged, thanks to fracking and horizontal drilling.

Private-sector entrepreneurs were apparently energized by new technologies and the specter of profits in an uncertain oil market — and a combative new sense of self-reliance that they were on their own without much government approval. Grimy, forgotten men on rigs have saved Americans trillions in lower energy prices and import costs — and all despite, not because of, Obama.

Third, Obamism is proving finite. Yes, this is the Obama era of intolerant imposition of gay marriage by court fiat, the selling of fetal limbs by Planned Parenthood, Climate Change McCarthyism, Black Lives Matter / Hands Up, Don’t Shoot mythologies, “Punish Our Enemies” ethnic smearing, state-ministry journalism, and Sanctuary City neo-Confederate nullification [5]. But in the process, Obama has nearly destroyed the Democratic Party — and all but turned it over either to a veritable crook and has-been or a 73-year-old self-described socialist. He lost both houses of Congress. The legislatures and governorships are overwhelmingly Republican. He turned off millions of working-class old-time Reagan Democrats. His new paradigm — demagogue minorities to vote en bloc in record numbers by any means necessary and screw those turned off by his separatist rhetoric — is probably not transferrable to other Democratic candidates.

Obama complains about Putin but does nothing. Here’s another way to squeeze him back home.

From Ukraine to Syria, the Obama administration has consistently misread Russian President Vladimir Putin’s objectives and the implications of cooperating with him. This has led to costly failures, but the administration is unlikely to change its approach. Congress need not sit idle too. By enacting new sanctions on Russia, U.S. lawmakers can send a strong signal to Moscow that its continued aggression against Ukraine and growing complicity in a genocidal war in Syria will come at a heavy price.

After Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014, the Obama administration and many U.S. allies imposed sanctions on Russian businesses and individuals. But those measures clearly haven’t been effective in discouraging Mr. Putin’s quest to exert Russian power and influence.

​In Ukraine, despite the supposed cease-fire effected by the Minsk Accords negotiated by Germany, France, Ukraine and Russia, Moscow-supported aggression continues in the contested east. Russian troops remain in the region, as an extensive Sept. 14 report from the Atlantic Council documents, and Reuters has reported that new Russian military bases are being built.

Officials underestimated complexities of setting up a rebel ground force amid chaos of war.
To build a rebel army, the Pentagon asked Syrian commanders last winter to nominate their best fighters. U.S. military officers spent more than a month checking each one for criminal or terrorist connections. Those who made the cut were sent to screening centers where they were questioned by American, Jordanian and Turkish officers. Then they waited, sometimes for days.

Fighters who made it to the screening centers were confused about the mission. When they learned what it was, many left. Others were found unfit, including one who showed up with open gunshot wounds. Under pressure to show operational success, the Pentagon started in July to field smaller groups than it wanted and watched from the sidelines as fighters fought the wrong enemy, or handed over equipment to al Qaeda or melted into Syria’s chaos.

The Pentagon’s effort to stand up a moderate rebel army, which would give the U.S. ground forces to fight Islamic State, has struggled since its inception to meet even its own modest goals, according to an account based on interviews with current and former U.S. officials as well as rebels who were part of the effort.

Officials now acknowledge they underestimated the complexities on the ground.

The program’s early stumbles, which follow problems with a similar Central Intelligence Agency effort, have reduced American military and diplomatic influence and left an opening for Russia—a long-standing Syrian ally—to ramp up its military assistance for the country’s embattled leader, Bashar al-Assad.

The anti-Israel prejudice at The New York Times (NYT) is so extensive and persistent that the paper’s partiality is now undeniable and well documented (see the endless archive of NYT bias reports at two media watchdogs: CAMERA and Honest Reporting). Here are just four egregious examples from the last few weeks.

On September 10, the NYT singled out Jewish lawmakers on the Iran deal.

On September 15, the NYT suggested that the Israeli who was murdered by rock-throwing Palestinians had died of a “self-inflicted accident” after the attackers had merely “pelted the road” (rather than his car). The National Review provided a detailed critique of this farcical “reporting.”

Unbelievably, Diaa Hadid, a NYT “journalist” responsible for reporting on Israel, used to work for an anti-Israel hate group, so it’s no surprise that she authored an article suggesting that Palestinian attackers pelted a road with stones on which an Israeli’s self-inflicted car accident just happened to cause him to die.

Among the flurry of support that the latest Muslim provocateur — 14-year-old faux-clock-bomb maker Ahmed Mohamed — received earlier this month was a posting by facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, reading, “Having the skill and ambition to build something cool should lead to applause, not arrest. The future belongs to people like Ahmed.”

He can say that again. The future belongs to young Muslim males making what look like bombs. That writing has been on the wall for so long, it’s fading. Moral of the story: If you see something, say something. Unless of course you’re a teacher and one of your students brings something that looks like a bomb to class. Then you definitely shouldn’t say anything. Especially if the student has a Muslim name.

What a luxury for all of Ahmed’s supporters to be able to chime in on his side, when they weren’t the ones faced with a possible threat to their lives and the decision of what to do, if anything. Zuckerberg even invited the hoaxer to visit facebook headquarters, just as Obama invited him to visit the White House. Maybe Ahmed is saving the real bomb for one of those occasions, as was perhaps the ultimate goal of this family-planned stunt in the first place. In which case I hope Zuckerberg doesn’t do anything gauche like call police or duck.

Ahmed’s big plans for September were to go to Mecca and the White House. One is surprised the two aren’t yet a single destination.

I found it surprising that in all the media coverage concerning Chris Harper Mercer, even after showing a brief interview on camera with his British absentee father, there was almost no mention of his mother with whom he lived. It took several days before I found out online that Laurel Harper is a black woman who works as a nurse, who shared a one bedroom apartment with her son along with her interest in firearms and shooting ranges. After reading about her ongoing efforts to control her neighbors’ voice levels, her building’s insect infestation, the behavior of pets – all in the name of protecting her fragile son from external annoyances – I wondered what she was thinking as she tallied up the count of 14 weapons available to her “Asperger” son who had already proved unable to get along with people, with school or with the army.

With the potential devastation and catastrophic deaths a nuclear bomb can cause you would think the first question needed to be answered in the affirmative, is “can Iran be trusted” to keep an agreement? According to Iran’s track record, clearly the answer is no.

In May, 2010 The Christian Science Monitor reported that Hillary Clinton, Secretary Of State, said Iran had violated the UN’s NPT101 that they had signed.

A United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency report said Iran has been pursuing nuclear weapons since before 2004, testing detonators and other components that have few uses other than for a nuclear bomb.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) outlined that despite sanctions, Iran’s engineers have now fully fitted out the Fordo enrichment facility, dug into a mountain near the holy city of Qom.”

As of September 29, 2015, the Obama administration is closing the last remaining American uranium enrichment facility. Yet we are moving forward on a deal with Iran that permits the Islamic Republic to produce ongoing uranium enrichment.

On May 27, 2014 the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, vowed to destroy the U.S. He said promoting negotiations is treason.