The Selling of the Iran Deal

Weekly Standard

. . . "It would be hard to overstate how little reason the media had to trust the Obama administration on Iran. Initially, officials lied about even the existence of bilateral talks with Iran. The official narrative was that negotiations were keyed to the election of the "moderate" president of Iran Hassan Rouhani in 2013. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki would later confirm reporting that talks with Iran actually began in 2011.

"As for why journalists would carry so much water for the Obama administration, the simple answer is that they shared the administration's passion for a deal with Iran. Rozen's slavish devotion to Obama's Iran policy, for one, has been something to behold . . .

"That's just the beginning. When the Iranian Revolutionary Guard leader Qassem Soleimani, responsible for killing American soldiers in Iraq, began violating sanctions against Iran by visiting Europe, Rozen asserted his travels were lawful. In January, when Iran boarded an American vessel in the Persian Gulf, she responded to a photo of the Americans being held captive by tweeting, "looks like they are making friends." (In Samuels's piece, Rhodes is quoted lamenting the fact that the leaked news of American sailors being taken captive—Rhodes was trying to keep it a secret—would overshadow Obama's State of the Union address later that same day.)...

Obama aide Ben Rhodes stirs ill will at home, abroad with series of gaffes  . . . "Ben Rhodes, the talkative aide who is in charge of “strategic communications” for President Obama’s national security team, by Monday had managed to revive opposition to the president’s Iran nuclear deal, alienate journalists supposedly rooting for the president, raise hackles in Israel and even trigger a White House swipe at Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton." . . .

Attn: Bruce Springsteen! Man accused of choking girl, 8, in restroom of South Loop restaurant

Chicago Tribune

Reese M. Hartstirn, of the 500 block of North Racine Avenue, was charged with a felony count of aggravated kidnapping and a felony count of aggravated battery to a child under 13,

 (Cook County Sheriff)

"A West Town man is accused of choking an 8-year-old girl until she passed out inside a bathroom of a restaurant in the South Loop neighborhood last weekend.

"The girl was inside J[a]son's Deli in the 1200 block of South Canal Street with her mother around 1:15 p.m. Saturday when the two became separated, according to police.

"The girl went into the bathroom. At some point, Reese M. Hartstirn, 33, came into the bathroom and started choking the girl with his hands, causing her to become unconscious, according to the Chicago Police Department.

"He then picked up the unconscious girl and carried her into a bathroom stall, closing the door so she couldn’t leave, according to the release.  Hartstirn pushed the girl’s mother when she came into the stall to rescue her daughter, police said." . . . Via Rush Limbaugh

Somebody please forward this on to Bruce Springsteen, will you? TD

Obama 'obsession' allows men to choke girls in bathrooms  

“ 'Gretchen Flores remembers how, as a 10-year-old girl, her male swim coach talked her into letting him ‘help’ massage the cramps out of her legs in the locker room. His assistance turned into sexual abuse, and a secret that burned a hole in her memory. “As far as I know, he was never arrested,” Flores says.

"The report continued, explaining Emory University psychiatrist Dr. Gene Abel found that the average male pedophile who abused girls “had victimized 52 girls over the course of his lifetime. Another study discovered that pedophiles harm 12 victims before being caught.”

"The Daily Signal reported that sexual assault survivors have little concern over the motives for a male in a women’s room, whether he identifies as transgender or not.”The presence of a male of any variety, whether he’s somebody who identifies as a trans or not, whether he has deviant motives or not, that’s irrelevant to the reality that for survivors of sexual trauma to just turn around and to be exposed to that is an instant trigger,” said Kaeley Triller, a sexual trauma survivor." . . .

Related video at Alliance Defending Freedom

TV Politics vs. Movie Art

"Clooney’s cheap Money Monster and Davies’s rich Sunset Song."

NRO

. . . "Lacking the currency of those Seventies Vietnam/Watergate reflexive dramas, Money Monster partakes of the fashionable thralldom to television as the ultimate communicative medium, but it sentimentalizes the intellectual and spiritual damage TV does to those — including social elites — who bow down to it. Foster directs in that HBO style people mistake for cinema, but her emphasis on close-ups and shrill emotional manipulation (as when show hijacker Jack O’Connell is publicly humiliated and then pitied by big shot Gates and his tough female studio director, played by Julia Roberts) is all for lovers of the boob tube. Foster’s low point comes when, once the crisis is resolved, she does a Family-of-Fed-Up-Man montage of average faces. Thank God for Terence Davies’s Sunset Song, or else this week’s moviegoers might have had no idea what a real movie looks like. 

Escape from Obama's transgender school bathrooms

This writer has given up on public schools

American Thinker   "Barack Obama's transgender regime has officially carried its demands for your child's compliance with sexual deviancy to the level of an imperial directive:

Public schools must permit transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity, according to an Obama administration directive issued amid a court fight between the federal government and North Carolina.

The guidance from leaders at the departments of Education and Justice says public schools are obligated to treat their transgender students in a way that matches their gender identity, even if their education records or identity documents indicate a different sex.

"The Department of Justice, which apparently now means primarily "social justice," aka cultural Marxism, is joining the Department of Education – a thoroughly anti-constitutional entity the continued existence of which represents the greatest failure of the Reagan presidency – to complete American compulsory schooling's true, original, and essential mission: the reduction of the population to a confused, helpless mass of spiritually unindividuated "worker units" for the benefit of a permanent corporate-political ruling elite.

"The sudden (but long anticipated and well prepared) drive for transgender bathrooms in public facilities is part of progressivism's final assault on modesty and personal privacy. " . . . 

His remedy: get out now:

Get your children, your children's children, and your friends' children out of public school now, and keep them out.If thinking of your nation's girls and boys being submitted to this degradation –and even worse, thinking of them learning to accept this degradation – is not enough to shake you out of your well-trained adherence to the fool's dream of "improving the public schools," then perhaps you are unreachable. 

Emphasis added, TD 

Fear the Walking Trump

http://terrellaftermath.com/

"Donald Trump said Wednesday he’ll release his taxes once his annual IRS audit is complete in November. Trump confided that the biggest sacrifice he made during his run for president was giving up two seasons of hosting NBC's Apprentice. Just to stay in practice he fired sixteen candidates."

"Newt Gingrich was reported a top choice for VP by Trump Wednesday. Between them they have six wives, countless affairs, and a sex scandal that led to resignation. Republicans refuse to concede the Who’s-Going-to-Have-the-Most Entertaining-Presidency vote to Bill and Hillary without a fight."

Comedian Argus Hamilton 

Fear the Walking Trump
After delivering a hatchet job on Trump, the writer concludes with this positive note:

. . . "Under The Donald, the U.S. government will have better things to do than regulating holiday displays; more important are the little things that have been ignored, such as defending our borders, providing competent government, building the military, and setting the stage for prosperity. Divide the nation into categories, hand the keys to the kingdom to regulators, ignore veterans…fuhgeddaboudit. Instead, says The Donald, let’s make America great again!

"To that I say: And a merry Christmas to you, President Trump."

Basically the writer wants us to know we are not sycophantic toward Mr. Trump as Obama's voters were. We know he is not the great leader America needs.

I will vote for Trump because I'm voting for a Supreme Court and for all the cabinet heads Trump may choose against what I know Hillary's choices will be.

Anybody - except for any Democrat - will be better than another 4-8 years of Obama-like rule in spite of what  this writer says  . TD

No shortage of commentary on Ben Rhodes and Obama's contempt for the press

"Remember, it was also Rhodes who authored the Benghazi “smoking gun” email which sought as a goal to “underscore” that the attacks that killed four Americans resulted from “protests [that] are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.' ”  Roger Aronoff 

Times Article On Ben Rhodes Exposes White House Contempt For The Press And Public  . . . "We have consistently reported on the administration’s use of false narratives to sell policies to the press, and thereby the American people. For example, it was the Obama administration that argued Congress’ choice for an Iran deal was between war and supporting a disastrous agreement that would eventually grant Iran nuclear weapons. The mainstream media then reported this as the only two options regarding Iran.

"Rhodes’ fingerprints were all over this effort. “It was Rhodes who framed the Iran deal as a choice between peace and war,” wrote Lee Smith for The Weekly Standard, continuing, “and it was Rhodes who set up a messaging unit to sell the deal that created an ‘echo chamber’ in the press.' ” . . .

Obama’s ‘compadres’ in the press still serving as his King’s Guard

Leftist, fawning and lazy, the media were easy marks for Team Obama

 

. . . "Members of JournoList, a listserv made up of hundreds of left-wing journalists from major media organizations, were outraged that ABC News’ George Stephanopolous had asked Mr. Obama why it had taken him so long to dissociate himself from Rev. Wright’s comments. The left-wing journalists jumped into action, with Thomas Schaller of the Baltimore Sun suggesting, “Why don’t we use the power of this list to do something about the debate” and writing a “smart statement expressing disgust” at the questions Mr. Stephanopolous had asked Mr. Obama.

"No wonder so many in the left-wing media sought to protect Mr. Obama. With religious fervor, they believed in the man and his mission and did whatever it took to make his presidency a reality. . . .

. . . "The intensity with which these media organizations were called out, dressed down and punished was astonishing — and served as an effective deterrent to anyone else who might be inclined to probe the administration’s actions. It was — and continues to be — an outrageous abuse of power, submitted to willingly by much of the press.

"Throughout his interminable presidency, Mr. Obama has enjoyed the protection of this King’s Guard. Mr. Rhodes simply exploited their shallow idolatry and professional lassitude. And the country has been damaged immeasurably because of it."  

Monica Crowley is editor of online opinion at The Washington Times.

Has the Left Lost Its Mind on Transgenderism?

Weekly Standard  . . . "What he finds particularly annoying, however, is the pushiness and heavy-handedness of transgender activists and their liberal enablers:

The political agenda of the transgender community often seems to demand that we be complicit in their convictions, that we humor them, pretend that we view them as the genuine article when in fact they seem to be staging a kind of masquerade, dressing in a costume, playing at make-believe. We are not asked just to follow the humane policy of live and let live, exhibiting acceptance and tolerance as well as fighting for their rights as human beings, but we are required to act as their enablers, enter into their fantasies, protect them from the truth of a devastating fallacy. We are expected both to support them politically, an easy task for most liberals, and affirm their deeply guarded conceptions of selfhood, something that lies well outside the province of the struggle for equal protection under the law—in truth, that lies firmly in the field of counseling or psychotherapy. I know of no other human-rights movement in which supporters are adjured, not only to advocate for the greater civil liberties of a minority, but to aid and reinforce its self-delusions, to guard those who harbor them from the truth.

The Department of Justice Tries to Create a Third Sex  . . . "The letter from the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) cited four cases in which, they claim, that federal courts have accepted “transgender” as a sex with the right to protection from discrimination that is identical to the protection enjoyed by males and females." . . .

A Sad Video Highlights the Contradictions and Tragedy of the Transgender Moment  

. . . "But we can’t let a discussion of intellectual contradictions mask the human tragedy. A deeply confused teenager is on the verge of mutilating himself — of literally opening a wound that his body will consistently attempt to close — for the sake of hoping to find love with straight men. The level of psychological confusion and pain is difficult to grasp, but rather than speak the truth to that young man and work diligently to counsel and mentor him, an entire class of people believe that he should irrevocably harm his own body, and the rest of us should believe a lie — that he’s “really” a girl." . . .

Dirty Hands: Past, Present and Future

A "guest-essay on the magnitude of the moral corruption that infected the Western democracies during the Second World War."

Gates of Vienna

General Heinz Guderian and Lieutenant Colonel Gustav-Adolf Riebel together with Brigadier Semyon Krivoshein, Commander of the Soviet 29th Tank Brigade, in Brest-Litovsk, September 1939

. . . "We therefore have a duty to ensure that truth, justice and compassion remain at the centre of our own lives, as the politicians we elect go about the business of running our country. And we have a duty to speak out when we see politicians make moral compromises in our name, even when they claim to be making such compromises in order to achieve a greater good. If the British state visits harm upon its own citizens in order to prevent dissenting voices from being heard, then it is possible that our country will begin to travel down an evil road, and there will be no means of altering course. So we must learn from history, and we must speak out whenever we see politicians act in ways that run counter to our own sense of truth, justice and compassion. The alternative is to risk an uncontrollable descent into a different kind of reality, where knowledge of what happened in places like Katyn will be seen not as reminders of what some human beings are capable of, but as milestones we passed long ago on the road to hell on earth." 

White House’s Susan Rice: U.S. national security agencies are too white

Washington Times

"In a White House often accused of being stacked with loyalists, President Obama’s national security adviser said Wednesday there are too many white people in key government posts, endangering national security because they think alike.

"Speaking at Florida International University’s commencement, Susan E. Rice, who is black, said a diversified government workforce is more likely to yield “better outcomes” than a predominantly white one.

"Referring to criticism that the U.S. national security workforce is “white, male and Yale,” Ms. Rice told the graduates, “In the halls of power, in the faces of our national security leaders, America is still not fully reflected.' ” . . .

So the pressure will be to lower qualification standards to increase the number of many of the right ethnic group. This was done long ago in the *Rampart Division of the LA Police Department with the result that many problems resulted with arrests and convictions.

*Ann Coulter comments at length on this issue.

"In a massive, detailed 2000 study of the effect of court-ordered affirmative action plans on police departments, economist John Lott found that the more minorities on a police force, the higher the rates of murder, manslaughter, violent crime, robbery and aggravated assault will be. Violent crime increased by a minimum of 3.3 percent every year after affirmative action policies went into effect -- and the spike in crime was highest in black neighborhoods. 

"The problem was not with black cops, Lott's study showed, but rather with the lowering of standards across the board, resulting in less-qualified officers of every race. To get more of MSNBC's "voices of oppression" on police forces, requirements are reduced for all recruits. (Just as quality declined at MSNBC when "voices of oppression" had to be added to their lineup.) 

"We end up with cops who are criminals, the Rampart scandal of the 1990s and great movies like "Training Day." . . . 

Liberals cannot be made to learn from history. TD

EXCLUSIVE: Persian Gulf Sheikhs Gave Bill & Hillary $100 Million

Daily Caller  . . . "Yet as secretary of state, Clinton consciously and actively sought to legitimize the sheikdoms through many new Department of State programs.

"It’s unclear what kind of promises or concessions the Clintons may have given the monarchs in return for their lavish financial support over the years, but last month the candidate reversed her long-standing support for fracking.

"Hillary’s new position, unveiled last month at a CNN presidential debate with Democratic opponent Sen. Bernie Sanders, put her in alignment with the Gulf State policy that opposes North American oil and gas fracking." . . .

Barack Obama’s deeply demoralizing “You didn’t build that” commencement speech at Howard.

The Post Turtle* President Speaks   "One wishes that after seven-plus years of demoralizing, ugly, incompetent and divisive leadership, there would be at long last something one might find in Barack Obama that an average American could make peace with.

"But in one of the latter speeches of his presidential tenure, a commencement address at historically black Howard University over the weekend, Obama showed himself incapable either of uniting the country he’s misgoverned since January of 2009 or even giving its citizens reasons to believe they can improve their own stations.

"According to Obama’s Howard speech things are terrific — both in comparison to when he took office and also in comparison to the time of a far more successful president than he.

"Obama opened the speech by warning that he was going to give what he called a “hot take,” and then suggested that the country is in every way better than it was “when I was in college,” and picked 1983, the year Ronald Reagan’s presidency took off as well as the year Obama graduated from Columbia, as his benchmark." . . .

Hilarious (yet deeply sad): Enthusiastic Hillary rally speaker chokes on saying ‘under God’ as Hillary smiles standing next to her

Thomas Lifson   "It's your must-see video moemnt of the day -- 16 seconds that crystallized the religious stance of the modern Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s distance from the Deity. At a rally yesterday in Blackwood, NJ, Susan Shin Angulo, a member of the Camden County Board of Freeholders, was trying to whip up crowd enthusiasm to Sanders-level enthusiasm, and got carried away. She visibly and audibly appeared to choke on the words “under God” as a familiar phrase from a better time made it way from her brain to her lips.

“Only Hillary can bring us together, one nation…ugh, err indispizzable”

"This is not the first time Democrats have rebelled publicly against invoking the Deity. This moment from the last Democratic National Convention says it all:"