RUTHFULLY YOURS

Hillary Clinton’s worst punishment will be her failure.

Hillary Clinton has spent a third of her adult life trying to become president. All for nothing.

The first time around, she wasted $200 million just to lose to Obama. $11 million of that money came from the notoriously “flat broke” couple. This time around she was determined to take no chances.

Together with her husband she built up a massive war chest using money from foreign governments and speaking fees from non-profits, funneled into her own dirty non-profit and a complex network of unofficial organizations staffed by Clinton loyalists, secured an unofficial endorsement from Obama and carefully avoided answering questions or taking positions on anything. There was no way she could lose.

Now she’s losing all over again.

The Continent’s leaders, most of them, apparently believe that more money must be provided to “refugees” countries of origin, thus lessening the incentive to leave. Surely, with a full-blown invasion well underway, only the simple-minded would deem this approach any kind of solution.
I do my own casual surveys when I am away, as I have been these past few weeks in Britain. They are totally unscientific. Once in conversation I ask those around me — generally in pubs, I admit — what they think about this and that. For example, in the Labour heartland of working-class Liverpool there was little disquiet about nut-job Jeremy Corbyn’s policies. In fact, there was approval — the slight problem only that no-one had much knowledge of his policies. Printing money, leaving NATO, cozying up to Islamists and, the killer in current circumstances, of having a more lenient approach to admitting so-called refugees, were not top of my interlocutors’ minds or, in fact, anywhere in mind.

The ‘refugees’ crisis so far as I can tell is causing particular concern though not, I think, quite as much as the size of the problem warrants. Two exceptions were an ex-Royal Navy chap I met who wanted to herd them at the point of guns and ship them back, and a building-maintenance chap who thought that not only should Islam’s haters be deported but their whole families with them. On the edge, you might think, but a least they comprehended how great is the problem.

Barack Obama isn’t the first President to overlook Iran’s bloody hands in hopes of better relations. Bill Clinton did much the same when the FBI’s investigation into the 1996 Khobar Towers attack began pointing to Iran.

The Khobar bombings killed 19 American airmen who were living in those towers. Then-FBI director Louis Freeh has written of how his efforts to press the Clinton Administration into an investigation of Iran’s role came to nothing. In 2001 a grand jury indicted 13 Saudis and an unknown Lebanese and implicated Iranian officials in the killings.

Now the Saudis are reported to have in custody the man believed to have masterminded the attack. His name is Ahmed al-Mughassil, and he is a member of Saudi Hezbollah. He was picked up in Beirut after arriving there from Iran.

No doubt the capture of al-Mughassil would have been more convenient for President Obama after his nuclear deal with Iran was in place. That is why it’s so important for Members of Congress to take note. From the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon to the Khobar Towers to the Iranian-made IEDs that took the lives of many of our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran and its proxies have never hesitated to shed American blood.

Approaching Beijing on the basis of strength and example, not weakness and appeasement.

Over the past week, we have been dealt a painful reminder of just how important U.S. policy toward China is in the 21st century. On Monday, due largely to a crash in China’s stock market, U.S. markets suffered their worst day in four years. Insecurity and anxiety about the future—already high for American families—climbed even higher. It was a jarring illustration of how globalization is changing the U.S. economy.

China presents both opportunities and challenges. Trade with its growing middle class has opened American businesses to hundreds of millions of new customers. But Beijing’s protectionist economic and trade policies increasingly endanger America’s financial well-being. China is also a rising threat to U.S. national security. Earlier this year, it was behind the largest cyberattack ever carried out against the United States.

President Obama has continued to appease China’s leaders despite their mounting aggression. In addition to his insufficient responses to economic and national-security concerns, he has ignored the Chinese government’s mass roundups of human-rights advocates, oppression of religious minorities, detention of political dissidents, ever-tightening controls on the Internet, and numerous other human-rights violations. He has hoped that being more friendly with China will make it more responsible. It hasn’t worked.

Another government employee, another private account, another crashed hard drive.

When a government official (think Hillary Clinton) uses a private email account for government work (think Hillary Clinton) and then doesn’t turn over records (think Hillary Clinton), the public has to wonder why. For an example of that why, consider Thursday’s federal-court subpoena of Phillip North.

The North story hasn’t gotten a lot of attention, but it is a useful tale for clarifying exactly why we have federal records and sunshine laws. You see, government workers don’t use private email because it is “convenient.” They use private email to engage in practices that may be unsavory, or embarrassing, or even illegal. Let’s be clear about that.

Mr. North was, until a few years ago, a biologist at the Environmental Protection Agency, based in Alaska. Around 2005 he became enmeshed in reviewing the Pebble Partnership’s proposal to develop a mine there. Mr. North has openly admitted that he was opposed to this idea early on, and he is entitled to his opinion. Still, as a government employee his first duty is to follow the law.

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/2011/05/09/barenboim-now-and-then-a-musical-moron/

Another “wunderkind” of the Classical world who made a splash recently is Daniel Baremboim, the Israeli pianist and conductor, when he was granted “Palestinian” (read: Arab) citizenship at the end of a piano recital in Ramallah, for his work in promoting cultural exchange between young people in Israel and the Arab world.

“Under the most difficult circumstances he has shown solidarity with the Palestinian people,” said Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian MP and former leader of Arafat’s terrorist organization Al Fatah.

Baremboim was a great friend of the late Edward Said, with whom he founded an orchestra meant to bring Israeli and Arab musicians together called the East-West Divan workshop. However, in his lectures he went far beyond bringing harmony with increasingly harsh criticism of Israel while ignoring Arab provocation and terrorism.

In the first Edward Said lecture at Columbia University, delivered in 2005, two years after Said’s death, Baremboim stated that the failure of the Israeli government to accept the Palestinians’ “narration” led to anti-Semitism, and that suicide bombings in Israel had “to be seen in the context of the historical development at which we have arrived.”

In the fall of 2006, Baremboim gave a six part lecture series at Harvard University’s under the aegis of the Charles Eliot Norton Petry Center. His lectures focused on music as a catalyst for political change. Too bad the Nazis, who listened to Brahms and Beethoven, had not heard Baremboim describe how music can be a model for human collaboration. And, for good measure, he continued his scolding of Israel.

It’s been a while since renowned pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim took center stage in an international controversy.

Luckily for the 72-year-old expatriate (whose family moved to Israel from Argentina when he was nine, and who has spent the bulk of his career in Germany), his political views can always be counted on to give his baton a boost.

This week, the general music director of the Berlin State Opera and its orchestra, the Staatskapelle, announced his plan to take the show on the road to the Islamic Republic of Iran, in the wake of the nuclear agreement reached between Tehran and six world powers in July.

Because the mullah-led regime in Tehran views Western music as one among many threats to its reign of terror, however, the best Barenboim can do is “negotiate” a potential concert.

Of course, he cannot undertake this on his own. Such delicate affairs of state have to be orchestrated, literally and figuratively, by governmental bodies with the authority to engage in talks over such a sensitive matter.

On Monday, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said that “Iran is too large a player, too important a player in this region, to simply leave in isolation.” He also said that Iran is a major regional player that can be an “ally in fighting terrorism” — but that London must “tread carefully” in its relationship with Tehran.

The remarks came as Hammond was visiting Tehran to reopen the British embassy there. Countries have been flocking to Iran following the signing of the nuclear deal and are falling over themselves to get their piece of the Iranian multibillion-dollar pie.

According to British newspaper The Guardian, Hammond questioned whether Iran was really committed to destroying Israel, claiming that this had been the position of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s predecessor, and Rouhani had a “more nuanced approach.”

From the first moments President Obama took office, he has downplayed threats from radical Islamists. He was elected based on his promise to bring the troops home. He was reelected after claiming that al -Qaeda was “decimated.” Al-Qaeda was nothing of the sort. And while the United States withdrew from the Middle East, an even darker and more heinous threat filled the void.

It’s been known for over a year that the administration is downplaying the threat posed by ISIS.

Even as Pentagon spokesmen were painting a rosy picture of the coalition’s progress, the terrorists were gaining huge swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria, leaving a horrifying path of destruction in their wake.

Now, an IG investigation is looking into whether the ISIS analysis was purposefully distorted.

A judge blocked a controversial Environmental Protection Agency rule to “clarify” the definition of protected waters hours before it was set to go into effect Friday.

The EPA Waters of the United States rule covers “most” seasonal and rain-dependent streams, which account for about 60 percent of stream miles in the country, arguing they have “a considerable impact on the downstream waters.”

Wetlands “near rivers and streams” would be protected under the CWA, and “other types of waters [that] may have more uncertain connections with downstream water and protection will be evaluated through a case specific analysis of whether the connection is or is not significant.” Critics say this could be construed to even include ponds and ditches on private property.

The U.S. District Court in North Dakota granted a preliminary injunction against the rule going into effect — but that only covers 13 states that are parties in one suit against the regulations, and the EPA said others would be subject to the rule starting Friday. There are additional pending lawsuits as well, with more than half of the states in the nation participating.