Apathy in the Executive. Opportunity or problem?

Weekly Standard    . . . "Six years later, many conservatives again hope that an incoming Congress will set the agenda, but this time with an important twist. In 2010, conservatives wanted a Republican House to undo some of the worst policies pushed by a committed and ambitious progressive president. Now, conservatives are thinking not of defense but offense. They see a peculiar opportunity created by an incoming president who appears unusually uninterested in policy details and is notorious for a short attention span. 

"Indeed, for many on the right, Donald Trump's inattentiveness presents not just a possible silver lining to his tenure but a best-case scenario. An unengaged president who is vaguely amenable to conservatism on the policy front could make it possible for congressional leaders, working with administration appointees and mobilized activist groups, to achieve many of the goals conservatives have been pursuing for years (far longer than Trump has been a Republican)." . . .

Trump and U.S. foreign policy vis-à-vis Iran

Over 100.000 supporters of the Iranian resistance, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and the People's Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI) gathered in Villepinte, north of Paris to call for a Democratic change in their Country in the largest ever known gathering organised by an opposition outside of the territory of its own country.  The Clarion Project

Shahriar Kia  "The election of Donald Trump as President of the United States has wreaked havoc among the regime in Iran. Iran’s lobbying groups in Washington are going the distance to influence Trump’s foreign policy vis-à-vis the mullahs in Tehran.

"This is an effort to have the appeasement policy of current U.S. president Barack Obama continue under a new administration. This campaign is bent on convincing Trump and his cabinet that an Iran regime-change policy will strengthen the “hardliners” and weaken the “moderates.”

" 'If Trump adopts a hostile policy towards Iran or scraps the deal, hard-liners and particularly the IRGC will benefit from it," Reuters posted,citing a former Iranian “reformist” official.

"This is the core argument put forward by the Tehran lobby to deceive Washington and fashion U.S. foreign policy based on rapprochement with Iran. Eight years of engagement by the Obama administration not only rendered no change in Iran and its meddling policies, in fact, the mullahs were encouraged to further continue inflaming the region and increase domestic crackdown." . . .

Shahriar Kia is a press spokesman for an Iranian oppositionShahriar Kia group housed at Camp Liberty in Iraq. Kia says the group, the People’s Mujahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI, also known as MEK), advocates for a democratic, secular Iran with separation of church and state and gender quality that is nuclear-free. He graduated from North Texas University and currently resides in Iraq. 

Sharyl Attkison on The new age of propaganda

Clarice Feldman  "The video embedded below of a TED talk by Sharyl Attkisson deserves to be viewed by American Thinker readers. In it she discusses astroturf groups, the fake grass roots movements funded from above in order to influence media coverage of a political issue. It is a bit over 10 minutes, not an outrageous investment of your time compared to the valuable information it provides." 

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed shows anti-war leftists were playing into Al Qaeda’s hands.

"Al Qaeda didn’t have a masterful plan to lure us into Afghanistan, as the left liked to insist, instead it expected President Bush to follow in Clinton’s footsteps by delivering an empty speech and then writing it off as a law enforcement problem. Much as Obama had done with Benghazi. It wasn’t expecting the roar of jets over Kandahar."

Daniel Greenfield  "The left aided Islamic terrorists most not with street protests, but by embedding counterintuitive narratives into the framework of counterterrorism. These narratives turned reality on its head.

"In counterterrorism, counterintuitive narratives transformed inaction into a virtue.

"One of the most pervasive myths was that Islamic terrorists actually wanted us to fight them and that we could only defeat them by ignoring them. The irrationality of the myth that terrorists wanted us to bomb and kill them was exceeded only by its persistence among experts and political officials.

"Popularly known as “Playing into their hands”, the goal of this counterintuitive narrative was to make the ostrich approach appear prudent and masterful while flipping around patriotism by accusing national security hawks of playing into the hands of the terrorists by killing them.

"Only the appeasers had the secret to defeating Islamic terrorism while the patriots were truly traitors.

"Trump faced repeated accusation from Hillary and her proxies that he was playing into the hands of ISIS with calls to get tough on Islamic terrorism. And you can expect the smear that he’s playing into the hands of the terrorists by bombing and killing them to recur throughout his administration." . . .

The real reason for New York City's traffic nightmare

NY Post  . . . "City officials have intentionally ground Midtown to a halt with the hidden purpose of making drivers so miserable that they leave their cars at home and turn to mass transit or bicycles, high-level sources told The Post.

"Today’s gridlock is the result of an effort by the Bloomberg and de Blasio administrations over more than a decade of redesigning streets and ramping up police efforts, the sources said."

. . . “ 'They’re not coming out and saying it, but they’re doing other things to cut down on traffic coming into city, things such as taking streets that had four lanes and making them three by creating bike lanes, or putting a plaza in, creating pedestrian islands,” the source said.

“ 'They’re purposefully cutting down on the number of vehicles coming into the city by cutting down the space for vehicles.”

"The source said de Blasio “doesn’t care about traffic” and noted that the mayor could now blame congestion on President-elect Donald Trump, whose Trump Tower in Midtown is now ringed with security.

“ 'He really doesn’t care,” the source said. “Instead of working around it and helping it out, he’ll just blame everything on Trump.' ” . . .

     It's a Democrat thing; just as Obama wanting people to blame the Republicans for the government shutdown. Obama spent large sums of money to block off open-air memorials including even roadside pullouts where they could be seen from a distance. 
     One Obama administration employee put it this way “It’s a cheap way to deal with the situation,” an angry Park Service ranger in Washington says of the harassment. “We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can. It’s disgusting.”
     Another Ranger said, "Apparently, they want the public to feel the pain"
     Petulant and vindictive, was it not? The Tunnel Dweller