Sharansky: The U.S. has “lost the courage of its convictions”

Legal Insurrection   When did America forget that it’s America?

. . . "Sharansky correctly notes that reinforcement of the Mullah regime’s expansionist and aggressive posture seems to be a concession the U.S. is willing to accept:

Reality is complicated, and the use of historical analogies is always somewhat limited. But even this superficial comparison shows that what the United States saw fit to demand back then from the most powerful and dangerous competitor it had ever known is now considered beyond the pale in its dealings with Iran.

"And then Sharansky zeroes in on the problem — the Obama and modern liberal world view of moral equivalence:

While negotiating with the Soviet Union, U.S. administrations of all stripes felt certain of the moral superiority of their political system over the Soviet one. They felt they were speaking in the name of their people and the free world as a whole, while the leaders of the Soviet regime could speak for no one but themselves and the declining number of true believers still loyal to their ideology.
But in today’s postmodern world, when asserting the superiority of liberal democracy over other regimes seems like the quaint relic of a colonialist past, even the United States appears to have lost the courage of its convictions.

"So, When did America forget that it’s America?

"Don’t say 2008. That’s too simple. Obama’s election was the symptom, not the cause.

"We abandoned the educational system over two generations ago, and allowed people who think that the U.S. is the main problem in the world to get control of our children. Obama will be out of office in two years, but the problem will live on."

Obama is going Alinsky Rule 12 on Republicans

 

Thomas Lifson  ---"Although he doesn’t reference Saul Alinsky the Associated Press’s Jim Kuhhenn does notice a nasty turn in President Obama’s rhetoric:

With a tone of outrage and eye-rolling dismissiveness, President Barack Obama and his White House team are working out their aggressions on Republicans. Well into the final quarter of Obama's presidency the White House approach is, if you can't join 'em, beat 'em.
Even with a whiff of bipartisanship in the air, the president is going on offense and building on a strategy employed since Democrats lost control of the Senate. Disagree with a Republican? The White House approach is to single a lawmaker out, pick a fight and don't mince words.

"Rule 12 from Rules for Radicals:

“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions

"For the Mainstream Media, any notice of Barack Obama’s radical roots is out if bounds, so I suppose that we should be grateful that the AP even notices nastiness as a political strategy of the White House.

This is a White House unleashed, forgoing niceties for the kind of blunt talk some of Obama's allies have been demanding for some time. But the rhetoric carries risks of sounding peevish and signals that a president who once ran on the promise of changing the tone in Washington has fully embraced its political combat.

 
"Obama is not a nice man, he is full of anger and resentment. He has been packaged, building upon his radiant smile, as a healer, someone who would bring us together. His essence is the opposite."  Hat tip: Ed Lasky

Obama (The international mall cop) has made America the weak horse, not to be feared nor respected

The Unbearable Lightness of Obama’s Anti-Terror Policies  "There is a pretend quality to Obama’s stance on radical Islamic terrorism. It starts with his refusal to utter that phrase, preferring the meaningless term “violent extremists.” Well, at least those words do not make America’s enemies uncomfortable. But it gets worse.'.  Read more...

http://news.investors.com/photopopup.aspx?id=748432

Obama now open to immediate lifting of Iran sanctions?  “'This is the new America. We had better get used to it.”

"Those were the words of an Israeli TV analyst upon learning that Obama is open to negotiating an immediate lifting of sanctions on Iran as part of a nuclear deal — the exact opposite of what he and others in the administration have been saying.

Legal Insurrection @LegInsurrection  ·  16h 16 hours ago

Obama now open to immediate lifting of Iran sanctions? http://legalinsurrection.com/2015/04/obama-now-open-to-immediate-lifting-of-iran-sanctions/ …

 The Times of Israel reports:   . . . "The president also weighed in on Russia’s announcement earlier this week that it would lift a five-year ban on delivery of anti-aircraft missiles, giving the Islamic republic’s military a strong deterrent against any air attack. The White House initially objected, but Obama said, “I’m frankly surprised that it held this long.”

Russia signed the $800 million contract to sell Iran the  S-300 Missile System in 2007, but suspended their delivery three years later because of strong objections from the United States and Israel. “Their economy is under strain and this was a substantial sale,” Obama said." . . .

"Defense system"?  These missiles are to protect the atomic weapons that Iran promises to use to destroy Israel! They are fully as offensive as the weapons they will protect. TD

 

An Engineered Drought: Shortsighted coastal elites bear most of the blame for California’s water woes.

Californians can now be fined for long showers! California’s 
crops are also being blamed for our water woes.

 . . .  Again, the California paradox: those who did the most to cancel water projects and divert reservoir water to pursue their reactionary nineteenth-century dreams of a scenic, depopulated, and fish-friendly environment enjoy lifestyles predicated entirely on the fragile early twentieth-century water projects of the sort they now condemn.. . .

 

Victor Davis Hanson   . . . " We do know two things. First, Brown and other Democratic leaders will never concede that their own opposition in the 1970s (when California had about half its present population) to the completion of state and federal water projects, along with their more recent allowance of massive water diversions for fish and river enhancement, left no margin for error in a state now home to 40 million people. Second, the mandated restrictions will bring home another truth as lawns die, pools empty, and boutique gardens shrivel in the coastal corridor from La Jolla to Berkeley: the very idea of a 20-million-person corridor along the narrow, scenic Pacific Ocean and adjoining foothills is just as unnatural as “big” agriculture’s Westside farming. The weather, climate, lifestyle, views, and culture of coastal living may all be spectacular, but the arid Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay-area megalopolises must rely on massive water transfers from the Sierra Nevada, Northern California, or out-of-state sources to support their unnatural ecosystems." . . .

 

'Man-made disaster': Critics say California drought caused by misguided environment policies

Fox News

"The blistering drought that has Californians timing their showers, driving dirty cars and staring at brown lawns and empty swimming pools is a “man-made disaster,” according to critics, who say the Golden State’s misguided environmental policies allow much-needed freshwater to flow straight into the Pacific.

"In an average year, California gets enough snow and rain to put 200 million acres under a foot of water, but environmental opposition to dams over the last several decades has allowed the majority of the freshwater to flow into the ocean, even as the state’s population exploded to nearly 40 million people. The current drought has left farms parched and residents under strict water consumption orders, but some say it didn't have to be that way.

“ 'This is a man-made disaster,” said Bonner Cohen, senior fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research." . . .

Hat tip to Harley Standlee; Placerville, CA

L. Ron Obama and the Church of Progressivism

Victor Davis Hanson

 

. . . "But to progressives, they are scientific facts, so anyone who disagrees is either hopelessly ignorant or willfully evil, blinded by bigotry or in thrall to religious superstition. This explains the nastiness of progressive attacks on those who disagree with them, the quick recourse to ad hominem smears of the sort that appear only on the conservative fringe. Just as Scientology defames critics and defectors with false accusations and character assassination, so too progressives frequently hurl epithets like “racist” at those who criticize Obama, or indulge preposterous tropes like the “war on women,” or throw ugly names like “denier,” redolent of Holocaust denial, at anyone who questions that anthropogenic global warming is a scientific fact rather than a hypothesis. And progressives are eager to use the power of government and institutions like the IRS and college administrations to silence and stigmatize those who oppose them." . . .

Compare and contrast: Same TV reporter approaches Hillary Clinton and Marco Rubio

Thomas Lifson  "The following contrasting videos should be enough to chill the bones of every Democrat sensibly worried about how good a candidate Hillary Clinton will be. Dan Calabrese, of Herman Cain’s CainTV.com website brings us the two videos of the same TMZ reporter walking up to both candidates at an airport as they arrive.

"First, here is Marco Rubio:

"All smiles and affability, Sure, the reporter is not hostile, but anyone could get annoyed at questions about a spouse's past. Instead, Rubio laughs, makes a joke at his own expense, and comes across as a totally likable guy.

Hillary, not so much:

"The Democrats destroyed Mitt Romney’s candidacy by portraying him (absolutely falsely) as unfeeling, rich, out of touch, and uncaring. In contrast, Hillary does a great job of portraying herself in exactly this light.

"Please, Hillary, don’t let the naysayers discourage you. Hang in there, girl, and see this election to the end." Hat tip: iOTWReport

Krauthammer: She rides by van: The Hillary Clinton launch

 

Charles Krauthammer

"See Hillary ride in a van! Watch her meet everyday Americans! Witness her ordering a burrito bowl at Chipotle! Which she did wearing shades, as did her chief aide Huma Abedin, yielding security-camera pictures that made them look (to borrow from Karl Rove) like fugitives on the lam, wanted in seven states for a failed foreign policy.

"There’s something surreal about Hillary Clinton’s Marie Antoinette tour, sampling cake and commoners. But what else can she do? After Barack Obama, she’s the best-known political figure in America. She has papal name recognition. Like Napoleon and Cher, she’s universally known by her first name. As former queen consort, senator and secretary of state, she has spent a quarter-century in the national spotlight — more than any modern candidate.

 . . .
"So brace yourself for a glorious Republican punch-up, punctuated by endless meta-coverage of the Democrats’ coronation march. After which, we shall decide the future of our country. Just the way the Founders drew it up."

comicallyincorrect.com/

Islamic Terrorism: Why There Is None in Japan

Cherson and Molschky
 "With all this Muslim terrorism plaguing the world, perhaps it is time to take a look at a country not suffering the same fate and analyze exactly why that is…"

 

. . . "No, nothing of the kind. What Japan did to avoid problems related to Muslims was much simpler and cheaper; Japan is practically closed to Muslims.

"Officially, immigration to Japan is not closed to Muslims. But the number of the immigration permits given to the applicants from Islamic countries is very low. Obtaining a working visa is not easy for adepts of Islam, even if they are physicians, engineers and managers sent by foreign companies that are active in the region. As a result, Japan is “a country without Muslims”." . . .

Hillary staged Iowa coffee shop talk, what about Chipotle?

 

Legal Insurrection  " Via Drudge, The Daily Mail reports to the surprise of no one who has followed the Clintons, that Hillary’s coffee shop talk in Iowa was staged:"

 

. . . "It was more than perfect. Hillary was just a person buying a Burrito Bowl, like the regular folk, minding her own business on an All-American road trip. Not looking for publicity. But publicity just happened to find her. Uh huh.

"That Chipotle appearance was just too cute, by half.

"So who tipped off Haberman? The campaign? An operative working for the campaign? People playing the same role as in the coffee shop, making sure the photo ops were just right?

"I emailed Haberman about her tip, whether it was from the campaign or someone else, but she didn’t respond.  Can’t say I blame her, I wouldn’t reveal the source of a tip.

"Oh, it’s probably nothing.  Just a little birdie."

Obama and Revolutionary Romance; His foreign-policy errors result not from incompetence but from a conscious agenda.

Victor Davis Hanson

 

"Lots of questions arise about the muddled foreign policy of the Obama administration. Critics suggest that America’s friends have now become enemies, and enemies friends. Others cite incompetence and naïveté rather than deliberate agendas as the cause of American decline, and of growing global chaos from Libya to Ukraine.

"But, in fact, there is a predictable pattern to Obama’s foreign policy. The president has an adolescent, romantic view of professed revolutionary societies and anti-Western poseurs — and of his own ability uniquely to reach out and win them over. In the most superficial sense, Obama demonstrates his empathy for supposedly revolutionary figures of the non-Western world through gratuitous, often silly remarks about Christianity and Western colonial excesses, past and present. He apologizes with talk of our “own dark periods” and warns of past U.S. “dictating”; he contextualizes; he ankle-bites the very culture he grew up and thrived in, as if he can unapologetically and without guilt enjoy the West’s largesse only by deriding its history and values." . . .

 In lieu of reading or speaking a foreign language, or knowing much about geography (Austrians speak Austrian, the death camps were Polish, the Indian Ocean Maldives are the politically correct name of the Falklands, cities along the U.S. Atlantic Coast are Gulf ports, etc.), Obama adopts, in the manner of a with-it English professor, hokey accentuation to suggest an in-the-know fides anytime he refers to the Taliban, Pakistan, or Teheran.

 The Betrayal Papers: Part V – Who is Barack Hussein Obama?

 

. . . "The Communist Prelude: Frank Marshall Davis, Obama’s Mentor

"As documented extensively in Paul Kengor’s book The Communist, Davis ranks high among Obama’s early life influences. A literal card carrying member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), Davis was considered by the FBI an enemy of the state." . . .

• Frank Marshall Davis, a known Soviet Communist and admirer of Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler, was a friend of Obama’s mother’s father, Stanley Dunham.
• The Communist Davis lived in both Hawaii and in Chicago. He was Barack Obama’s mentor through the 1970s, until his departure for Occidental College in 1979.
• Davis was also a pornographer. In his book Sex Rebel, he wrote excitedly about having sex with minors. Pedophilia was unusual for Communists of the era: Harry Hay, another Communist and associate of Davis, was reportedly an advocate of NAMBLA, the National Man-Boy Love Association.
• In 1995, in a broadcast on Cambridge Municipal Television, Barack Obama described Davis as “a close friend of my maternal grandfather, a close friend of gramps” and “fairly a well-known poet.”

Read more...

VIDEO: Israel Air Force Preparing for the S-300 Anti-Aircraft Missile f

Yeshiva World News

Earlier this week the Kremlin announced it was removing its ban on the sale of the advanced S-300 anti-aircraft system to Iran, an announcement that led to condemnation from Israel and the United States.
In Israel, the air force is not standing by waiting for miracles, but pilots are already training on the simulator for the F-35 fighter planes, the most advanced fighter jet in the world. The pilots are training and learning ahead of delivery of the first planes at the end of 2016, part of a major deal that was signed between Jerusalem and Washington.

Ads By Artscroll:

The air force continues preparing for a possible offensive against Iran, and the F-35 is capable of evading the S-300 anti-aircraft system. Air Force Brigadier-General Lehu HaKohen explains the air force is preparing many options against Iran, including the F-35.
Next month, the first group of pilots and technicians including a squadron commander will head to the United States to begin training.
- See more at: http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/headlines-breaking-stories/302614/video-israel-air-force-preparing-for-the-s-300-anti-aircraft-missile.html#sthash.44nITueD.dpuf

Earlier this week the Kremlin announced it was removing its ban on the sale of the advanced S-300 anti-aircraft system to Iran, an announcement that led to condemnation from Israel and the United States.
In Israel, the air force is not standing by waiting for miracles, but pilots are already training on the simulator for the F-35 fighter planes, the most advanced fighter jet in the world. The pilots are training and learning ahead of delivery of the first planes at the end of 2016, part of a major deal that was signed between Jerusalem and Washington.

Ads By Artscroll:

The air force continues preparing for a possible offensive against Iran, and the F-35 is capable of evading the S-300 anti-aircraft system. Air Force Brigadier-General Lehu HaKohen explains the air force is preparing many options against Iran, including the F-35.
Next month, the first group of pilots and technicians including a squadron commander will head to the United States to begin training.
- See more at: http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/headlines-breaking-stories/302614/video-israel-air-force-preparing-for-the-s-300-anti-aircraft-missile.html#sthash.44nITueD.dpuf

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