07/14/15
Daily Archives: July 14, 2015
07/14/15
Iran Deal: Be sure of this much – With Obama’s help, Evil is Winning
By: William Palumbo
The American Report
What began in 2012 with secret negotiations between Valerie Jarrett and Iran has now borne its toxic, likely nuclear, fruit. It is now all but certain, excepting an unlikely Congressional intervention, that the Obama administration will officially legitimize the world’s most prolific sponsor of Islamic terror. This follows on the heels of a surprise announcement that Obama would normalize relations with Cuba.
From Tehran to Havana, evil is winning, and Obama is leading the way.
Let’s recall a few things about the Iranian and Cuban deals, and their negotiators:
Obama’s Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett was born in Shiraz, Iran in 1956. A personal friend of Barack and Michelle since she introduced the couple, Jarrett is widely assumed to be the most powerful person in the White House. The subject of an FBI investigation, Jarrett’s family is connected with old guard Chicago Communists, including Obama’s political mentor, Frank Marshall Davis.
If that weren’t enough to make you question this “deal,” Secretary of State John Kerry’s daughter is married to an Iranian man with family in Iran. Conflict of interest, anyone?
Barack Obama is the president who backed the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood into power during the Arab Spring. After issuing Presidential Study Directive Eleven (PSD-11), Obama allied the U.S.A. with terrorists in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and is still backing anti-Assad terrorists in Syria. His administration, through the DOJ, has purged all mention of “Islam” and “Muslims” from counter-terrorism. With Obama’s approval, the Department of Homeland Security and the Internal Revenue Service have been weaponized against conservatives and Republicans. Yes, that means Obama views American citizens, not Islamic terrorists, as the most dangerous threat to national security.
Likewise, domestic counter-terrorism efforts have been hampered against Muslim Brotherhood front Islamic organizations, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), who are now regarded as friends and invited to the White House. Finally, Obama has crippled the U.S. military and intelligence agencies, and left the southern border completely open to whatever murderer, rapist, or terrorist wants to walk in.
Iran, for its part, has been the preeminent sponsor of Islamic terrorism since 1979. Its current leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, personally translated into Farsi the works of Sayyid Qutb, the Muslim Brother who developed the ideology of modern Islamic terror. Iran funds both Hezbollah and Hamas. Iran has a friendly relationship with the terrorist regime of Omar Bashir in the Sudan, where there is ongoing Christian genocide.
Through Hezbollah, they operate narcotics and terrorist networks around the world, including in Latin America. Hezbollah is remarkably powerful in Venezuela and Mexico, and was behind the 1994 bombing in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which targeted Argentine Jews.
Cuba, an Iranian ally, is home to another other rogue anti-American regime that welcomes Hezbollah terrorists. Bill Ayers, the domestic terrorist who launched Obama’s political career, helped organize trips to Cuba for the Students for a Democratic Society with the infamous Venceremos Brigade.
Not only have the Ayatollahs and Castro brothers been rewarded for their treachery, they are being rewarded handsomely: Cuba will now have full diplomatic relations with the United States, and Iran is expected to receive $100 billion in previously frozen funds.
Do you now start to get a picture of what Obama and the U.S. State Department have accomplished?
2016: A Vote for Republicans, or more Terrorists
In a rare show of wise solidarity, GOP Presidential candidates have denounced the disastrous Iranian deal. Indeed, to listen to Republicans today is almost like listening to former Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, who has publicly blamed Obama for ruining the close relationship between the United States and Israel.
Hillary, who will almost assuredly be the Democratic nominee, is supportive of the deal. Unsurprising, as Clinton was a fellow architect of the Arab Spring, and her personal aide Huma Abedin is tied to the Muslim Brotherhood through her immediate family.
For Americans at all concerned with the future of their country, it should be very clear that the Democrat Party stands with terrorists. Choose wisely in 2016.
07/14/15
The Horrific Made Real
Until the end there was doubt that this would actually happen. But it happened. Heaven help us now. The fools who were negotiating in Vienna have reached an agreement. And look how happy they appear, after the crushing damage they have fomented. (Of course Zarif of Iran, who is laughing the hardest, would be ecstatically happy.)
Credit: Reuters
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I share here some basics of the agreement, as described by Omri Ceren of The Israel Project (with my bolded emphasis added):
(1) The Iranian nuclear program will be placed under international sponsorship for R&D – A few weeks ago the AP leaked parts of an annex confirming that a major power would be working with the Iranians to develop next-generation centrifuge technology at the Fordow underground military enrichment bunker. Technically the work won’t be on nuclear material, but the AP noted that “isotope production uses the same technology as enrichment and can be quickly re-engineered to enriching uranium.” The administration had once promised Congress that Iran would be forced to dismantle its centrifuge program. The Iranians refused, so the administration conceded that the Iranians would be allowed to keep their existing centrifuges. Now the international community will be actively sponsoring the development of Iranian nuclear technology. And since the work will be overseen by a great power, it will be off-limits to the kind of sabotage that has kept the Iranian nuclear program in check until now.
(2) The sanctions regime will be shredded – the AP revealed at the beginning of June that the vast majority of the domestic U.S. sanctions regime will be dismantled. The Lausanne factsheet – which played a key role in dampening Congressional criticism to American concessions – had explicitly stated “U.S. sanctions on Iran for terrorism, human rights abuses, and ballistic missiles will remain in place under the deal.” That turns out to have been false. Instead the administration will redefine non-nuclear sanctions as nuclear, so that it can lift them…
(3) The U.S. collapsed on the arms embargo – Just a week ago Dempsey told the Senate Armed Services Committee that “under no circumstances should we relieve pressure on Iran relative to ballistic missile capabilities and arms trafficking.” Now multiple outlets have confirmed that the embargo on conventional weapons will be lifted no later than 5 years from now, and that the embargo on ballistic missiles will expire in 8 years. No one in the region is going to wait for those embargoes to expire: they’ll rush to build up their stockpiles in anticipation of the sunset.
(4) The U.S. collapsed on anytime-anywhere inspections – The IAEA will get to request access to sensitive sites, the Iranians will get to say no, and then there will be an arbitration board that includes Iran as a member. This concession is particularly damaging politically and substantively because the administration long ago went all-in on verification. The original goal of the talks was to make the Iranians take physical actions that would prevent them from going nuclear if they wanted to: dismantling centrifuges, shuttering facilities, etc. The Iranians said no to those demands, and the Americans backed off. The fallback position relied 100% on verification: yes the Iranians would be physically able to cheat, the argument went, but the cheating would be detected because of an anytime-anywhere inspection regime. That is not what the Americans are bringing home.
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Last night, Ceren, who was in Vienna, was interviewed on Voice of Israel. He referred to the deal as a “staggering, staggering failure of US diplomacy, and a staggering failure of US leadership.”
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You can see more on the deal as a Western catastrophe in the op-ed by Times of Israel editor David Horovitz:
http://www.timesofisrael.com/16-reasons-nuke-deal-is-an-iranian-victory-and-a-western-catastrophe/
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President Obama’s speech today, celebrating the end of the deal, is so filled with lies and misrepresentations it is difficult to know where to begin:
“…the United States, together with our international partners, has achieved something that decades of animosity has not: a comprehensive long-term deal with Iran that will prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
“This deal demonstrates that American diplomacy can bring about real and meaningful change, change that makes our country and the world safer and more secure…
“Today, because America negotiated from a position of strength and principle, we have stopped the spread of nuclear weapons in this region. Because of this deal, the international community will be able to verify that the Islamic Republic of Iran will not develop a nuclear weapon.
“This deal meets every single one of the bottom lines that we established when we achieved a framework this spring. Every pathway to a nuclear weapon is cut off…”
If you have been tracking the breathtaking concessions made by the US, either via my posts or elsewhere, you can identify the whoppers for yourself. But let me take one very obvious example here: He says, “we have stopped the spread of nuclear weapons in this region [the Middle East]. Quite the contrary is the case.
As the Jewish Policy Center explains:
“We have not. Far from providing for better arms control, the deal will encourage Sunni powers in the region, including Saudi Arabia and Egypt, to reconsider their own nuclear programs, shredding the international non-proliferation protocol. The region will become increasingly unstable.”
http://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/5627/statement-on-nuclear-agreement
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Prime Minister Netanyahu calls the deal a “stunning historical mistake.”
Credit: Hadas Parush/Flash90
In his statement today, he said (emphasis added):
“The world is a much more dangerous place today than it was yesterday.
“The leading international powers have bet our collective future on a deal with the foremost sponsor of international terrorism. They’ve gambled that in ten years’ time, Iran’s terrorist regime will change while removing any incentive for it to do so. In fact, the deal gives Iran every incentive not to change.
“In the coming decade, the deal will reward Iran, the terrorist regime in Tehran, with hundreds of billions of dollars. This cash bonanza will fuel Iran’s terrorism worldwide, its aggression in the region and its efforts to destroy Israel, which are ongoing.
“Amazingly, this bad deal does not require Iran to cease its aggressive behavior in any way…
“In addition to filling Iran’s terror war chest, this deal repeats the mistakes made with North Korea.
“There too we were assured that inspections and verifications would prevent a rogue regime from developing nuclear weapons.
“And we all know how that ended.
“The bottom line of this very bad deal is exactly what Iran’s President Rouhani said today: ‘The international community is removing the sanctions and Iran is keeping its nuclear program.’
“By not dismantling Iran’s nuclear program, in a decade this deal will give an unreformed, unrepentant and far richer terrorist regime the capacity to produce many nuclear bombs, in fact an entire nuclear arsenal with the means to deliver it.”
Netanyahu added:
“Israel is not bound by this deal with Iran and Israel is not bound by this deal with Iran because Iran continues to seek our destruction.
“We will always defend ourselves.”
~~~~~~~~~~
The Security Cabinet has met and unanimously voted to reject the terms of the agreement, and stands by Israel’s right to defend herself.
~~~~~~~~~~
And here we come to one essential aspect of what will now follow. There is a great deal of discussion regarding whether Israel can hit Iran, and whether Israel will opt to do so.
There are those who say declarations by Israel’s leaders are just bluff. I’m not sure that is true (see below), but those who call these words “bluff” are missing a very essential point: If Iran knows Israel is watching, and Iran is not sure if Israel is bluffing, the situation has a certain inhibiting effect on Iran’s behavior. This has already been demonstrated.
But in any event, as I said, we do not know that Israel is bluffing.
Military analyst Yaakov Lappin says that Israel will continue to develop means for attacking Iran, as long as Iran remains a threat: the military option is not off the table. However, it is only an attempt by Iran to break through to nuclear capability that would trigger an attack.
http://www.jpost.com/page.aspx?pageid=7&articleid=408827
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An attempt by Iran to break through remains a possibility because, historically, Iran cheats, and now the monitoring is sorely insufficient.
See this video of an interview of Naftali Bennett by BBC. He makes the point exceedingly well of how insufficient monitoring will be under the agreement:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/198134#.VaV2fZsVjIU
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A statement by MK Tzahi Hanegbi (Likud), Chair of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, reinforces the view presented by Lappin: Israel’s ability to attack is independent, he says. [I.e., no one controls us.] We won’t attack if they don’t cheat. “And we know that this entire program is based on fraud and deceit that the world is now accepting.”
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/198135#.VaV1W5sVjIU
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Netanyahu has been saying that he never promised he could stop this agreement, as the Western leaders were determined to go forward with it.
What he has promised, he says, and that promise stands, is not to let Iran go nuclear. Lappin’s analysis gives teeth to this commitment. The capability of hitting Iran’s nuclear facilities is one Israel has no intention of forfeiting, Lappin says.
~~~~~~~~~~
What I find more than a bit astounding is that in spite of widespread understanding in many quarters that the Iranian deal is badly flawed and dangerous, in all the world, Prime Minister Netanyahu is the only head of state who is speaking out forcefully.
In this, I believe he merits our whole-hearted support.
There are others, such as heads of the Sunni Arab states, who are truly horrified. But they are opting for a deafening silence.
~~~~~~~~~~
The next focus of attention is Washington DC and Congress – which has 60 days now to review the deal. The president has already said he will veto a negative vote. We knew this going in.
Israel has plans to speak with Congressional leaders and to bring the case for rejection of the deal to the American people. The hope is that the deal can be stopped.
According to some sources, Obama, for his part, now plans a charm offensive: he will invite Netanyahu to the White House, offer arms, etc., in an attempt to sway Netanyahu to accept the deal without campaigning against. Make it worth Israel’s while, that is.
I do not expect this will work.
I’ve even read commentary that suggests that Netanyahu might secure guarantees from the US that if Iran attacked Israel, the U.S. would provide defense. Trust the U.S. to defend us? Get real.
I will return to this diplomatic situation, as it plays out, several times over, I am certain.
07/14/15
Obama-Kerry’s JV Plan, Enhancing Iran’s Nuclear Destructiveness, within the USA
By: Arlen Williams
Gulag Bound
Netanyahu was right. This perverse deal would virtually guarantee Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons.
But as Jim Kouri’s Examiner.com article refers, it would also broaden their range, including their ability to plant bombs in the United States of America.
How much more evidence is necessary, to recognize Barack Hussein Obama II as the mass saboteur of the United States of America that he is? Just another hint: throughout these negotiations and now, apparently four innocent American citizens are imprisoned in Iran.
God shall protect Israel. If the USA does not cooperate, but opposes what He chooses to do with His Chosen Nation, even to become an enabler of its earthly enemies, will He protect America?
Obama-Iran nuke deal a ‘junior varsity’ foreign policy that’s childlike: Critics
07/14/15
07/14/15
Listen to Dick Morris. Really. ‘(Why) Bush Says Work More Hours’
By: Arlen Williams
Gulag Bound
Dick Morris’ past is checkered. Not having scoured his autobiographical works, I would hope he’s admitted that and, being a master at public relations, has not attempted to defend his former life as a chief political advisor to Bill Clinton.
So… everybody past that?
Good.
Currently, he’s not perfect, but I listen to him often for some of the most clear-eyed political analyses (and anti-globalist, anti-pseudo-elitist perspectives) of the more conventional pundits.
I suggest hearing this, which (after the rather piercing fanfare — okay, he could use some equalizing on the audio) begins…
When, last week, Jeb Bush said the solution to income inequality, or one solution, was for Americans to work longer hours, he wasn’t just committing a flub. He was showing his fundamental lack of understanding of what’s going on in America with the American worker. It was a mistake born of his elitism and his wealth, just as much as Mitt Romney’s “47%” line was — and the results could be just as catastrophic, if he ever gets the Republican nomination to run for president.
Listen to the rest here, and catch Bush’s ominously telling lost opportunity to nail Obamacare for its destruction of full-time work. (We are not granted an embed of his brief comments.)
Of course that doesn’t mean a Jeb Bush presidency would not be “just as catastrophic.”
07/14/15
Conserve What? Where’s the Outreach? in Comics? Graphic Novels? at Comic-Con?
By: Arlen Williams
Gulag Bound
From Judson Phillips, Tea Party Nation:
Do you wonder why conservatives are losing the culture wars as well as the political wars?
Conservatives are losing wars on both fronts. Because conservatives lose the culture war, political wars are lost as a matter of course. The late Andrew Breitbart explained why this happened and what conservatives needed to do.
What was Breitbart’s advice and how is the left using it and the right isn’t?
Andrew Breitbart warned that politics flows downstream from popular culture. Liberals understand popular culture and engage it.
From Roll Call:
Rep. John Lewis not only dressed as a revolutionary leader during his second appearance at Comic-Con International, he behaved like one — seizing the opportunity to shape young minds by taking the future firmly in his hands.
The Georgia Democrat returned to the pop culture smorgasbord on July 11 to promote the second installment of his illustrated biography, “March.” Lewis co-wrote the ongoing series of graphic novels, which chronicle the life-threatening situations he often found himself in throughout the civil rights era, with right-hand man Andrew Aydin.
The duo has been working for several years now with artist Nate Powell on a trilogy of books detailing Lewis’ ongoing crusade to vanquish inequality….
Well said, Judson.
Where people of principle and perspective don’t stand for and explain righteousness — and call wrongdoing, including collectivism, the destructive harm that it is, the world around us suffers, our own children suffer, and even we suffer from an underactive and corrupted conscience.
When we don’t take our messages to the people, especially to the young, that corruption is inevitably at work in us.
——GB——
07/14/15
07/14/15
Rep. Gowdy Questions DHS Sec. Johnson about Sanctuary Cities
Jeh Johnson in his appearance before the House was asked about Kate Steinle and he did NOT know who she was!
07/14/15
Yet another open letter to locksmiths
By: T F Stern
The Moral Liberal
I’m directing this to the newly appointed member of the Texas Department of Public Safety/Private Security Bureau (DPS/PSB), the Honorable C. D. Sims, an accomplished locksmith in his own right; however anyone associated with the Locksmith Industry is invited to consider what is presented. There’s been a burr under my saddle, so to speak, ever since the locksmith industry was hog tied into being licensed so many years ago and placed under (the thumb of) the DPS/PSB with Not One Single Locksmith on that governing board.
Forgive my sense of history; but we fought a war over the idea of taxation without representation.
Saying it’s about time a locksmith was on the DPS/PSB would be an under statement; so without wasting any more time, C. D., (the rest of you Honorable board members might want to pay attention as well), how about addressing an issue which has been ignored or didn’t seem important to those who have gone before you.
Mandated continuing education hours in order to maintain an existing Locksmith License
I wrote an article back in 2010, Subjects of Texas, regarding the increase of mandated continuing educations hours required by the DPS/PSB in order to maintain a valid locksmith license. At the time all locksmiths, regardless of how many years they’d been active in the Locksmith Industry, all were required to include 8 hours of locksmith related courses, taken only via approved instructors in the State of Texas; however, that increased to 16 hours without any justification.
What I wrote then still applies:
The DPS/PSB cannot justify its expensive and time consuming requirements, and I might add; requirements which do not serve to protect an unsuspecting public from scoundrels posing as legitimate locksmiths because those individuals who have acquired a locksmith license are not a threat and never were a threat to an unsuspecting public. The DPS/PSB has hijacked a part of the private sector and enslaved them with petty Lilliputian rules and regulations which serve only to guarantee permanent employment for DPS/PSB employees; a typical bureaucracy and drain on an already weak economy.
On more than one occasion I’ve submitted a proposal to the DPS/PSB, along with this same suggestion through the Greater Houston Locksmith Association (GHLA), to the effect that licensed locksmiths who have been performing their skills for 10 years or more should be exempted from mandated continuing education courses in order to maintain that license.
This isn’t to say that locksmiths intending to stay up to date or ahead of their competition should not endeavor to improve their skills via continuing education courses which are available in a wide number of important areas; only that the State of Texas should have no say on what should or should not be mandated once a locksmith has proven his or her skills for 10 years or more. This recommendation fell on deaf ears and was not acted upon.
Recently an article by George F. Will appeared in the Washington Post, The 110 year-old case that still inspires Supreme Court debates. That particular case was the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1905 Lochner decision which dealt with unionized bakeries attempting to mandate, through government intervention, the number of hours small family owned bakeries could work in order to compete in the market place under arbitrarily contrived figure set by the unions and passed along by the State.
The Lochner case found in favor of the small bakeries, specifically individuals going about, as best they could, supporting themselves and determining for themselves, how many hours to work, sleep or maintain a healthy work environment.
While the ruling was not unanimous, it did establish, or more accurately, re-established and “affirmed the United States’ foundational doctrine: Majorities cannot legislate away individuals’ constitutional rights for preposterous or protectionist reasons.”
In a recent opinion concerning occupational licensing in Texas, Justice Don Willett of the Texas Supreme Court said:
“Lochner meant that government must prove the public necessity of its restrictions of economic liberty. Sensible judicial deference to government regulations does not require judicial dereliction of its duty to gaze skeptically on government’s often ridiculous rationalizations of them. Since the New Deal, when courts abandoned protection of economic liberty, government has felt no obligation to produce evidence of the rationality of its restrictions. So, disreputable reasons go unchallenged.” (emphasis added)
So I once again turn this unsavory mandated continuing education issue back to you Honorable members of the DPS/PSB.
Can the State of Texas, specifically the DPS/PSB PROVE the public necessity of its restrictions of economic liberty? Mind you, locksmiths have already PROVEN they are capable and trustworthy by virtue of the fact they have already obtained a Locksmith License. It is up to the State to PROVE that individual locksmiths cannot continue to serve the public without the additional hours of mandated continuing education courses.
Unless it is the board’s contention that locksmiths forget most of what they have learned over a lifetime’s investment in their chosen area of specialty, then it’s pointless to rationalize this ridiculous and expensive waste of time and effort on any ‘journeyman locksmith’, a mandate which produces no measurable added security for the public.
The State of Texas should not be in the business of violating any individual’s God given rights of doing what they can to support themselves and their families. It’s time to eliminate mandated continuing course requirements for any licensed locksmith with 10 years or more experience.
T.F. Stern
NoisyRoom.net
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