Let’s Look At The Record

On Wednesday, Townhall posted an article titled:

Not-So-Scary Truth About Climate Change

As you know, John Kerry came back from the climate conference with ideas that will basically destroy life in America as we know it. John Stossel decided to take a look at some of the impact global warming might actually have. It should also be noted here that there are scientists who believe we are entering a period of global cooling rather than global warming. The earth goes through climate cycles, and we are always in some phase of one of those cycles. We are NOT in control of the weather, nor will we ever be.

In his book The Democrat Party Hates America, Mark Levin lists some of the predictions about climate made in recent years. You can draw your own conclusions as to how accurate they were.

Here are some of the predictions:

  1. Harvard biologist George Walk estimated that ‘civilization will end within 15 or 30 years [by 1985 or 2000] unless immediate action is taken against problems facing  mankind.’
  2. ‘We are in an environmental crisis that threatens the survival of this nations, and of the world as a suitable place to human habitation,’ wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner in the Earth Day issue of the scholarly journal Environment.
  3. The day after the first Earth Day, the New York Times editorial page warned, “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.’
  4. ‘Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,’ Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 issue of Mademoiselle. ‘The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years [by 1980].’

…13.Paul Ehrlich wared in the May 1970 issue of Audubon that DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons ‘may have substantially reduced the life expectance of people born since 1945.’ Ehrlich warned that Americans born since 1946…now had a life expectancy of only 49 years, and he predicted that if current patterns continues this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980 when it might level out. (Note: According to the most recent CDC report, life expectancy in the US is 78.6 years.)

As you can see, previous doomsday predictions have not been particularly accurate. Why should we believe the current doomsday predictions? I think the climate extremists have ‘cried wolf’ one too many times.

Please follow the link to the Townhall article to discover the upside of climate change.

Who Are The Zero Net Carbon Rules For?

Obviously the zero net carbon rules are not for the people who recently attended the Climate Control Summit.

On Tuesday, The U.K. Daily Mail posted the following:

JOSH HAMMER: A climate summit to turn you green with nausea: Kamala and Kerry flew on SEPARATE jets… the host is a Sultan oil boss… and it’s all held in Dubai – where they air condition the desert. What a net zero charade!

Keep in mind that these are the people who want to take away our gas stoves and air-conditioning and tell us to eat bugs while they jet around the world and eat Colby beef.

The article notes:

The United Nations‘ 28th climate change conference is melting down faster than an iceberg in the Arctic.

It’s a collection of the world’s rich and influential who’ve set out to save all of humanity by getting rid of fossil fuels. But apparently, the engines of this international powwow don’t run well on bull manure.

John Kerry, the failed presidential candidate now moonlighting as President Biden’s ‘special presidential envoy for climate’, is leading the American delegation for the COP28 summit.

True to form, Kerry, our Bay State plutocrat, reportedly jetted in on a carbon-belching private plane.

And Kamala Harris, our flailing vice president, deemed the meeting urgent enough to justify the greenhouse gases necessary to fuel Air Force Two and fly her to the lavish affair as well.

Would it be too much to ask them to ride share?

The article also notes:

Kerry is a hypocrite of world-historical proportions. He is a fabulously wealthy man (through marriage) who flies around the world aboard gas-guzzling planes to useless junkets to admonish the plebeians who drive to work in gas-guzzling cars. And to top it all off, this weekend in Dubai, Kerry had the chutzpah to preach that all coal plants must be shuttered posthaste.

His reason? Coal plants are killing people daily.

You know what else kills people daily, and on an order of magnitude considerably larger than climate change? Poverty. And there is no more time-proven, efficient method for alleviating poverty than ensuring the widespread availability of affordable energy.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. The author makes a number of very important points.

Did He Accidentally Tell The Truth?

On Wednesday, Legal Insurrection posted an article about a recent statement by former secretary of state John Kerry.

The article reports:

While speaking at the World Economic Forum this week, former secretary of state John Kerry seemed to inadvertently admit that the issue of climate change is all about money.

It makes perfect sense. Climate change and all of the activism around it have become big business. All those private jets in the parking lot aren’t going to pay for themselves.

This is the full quote:

“I’m convinced we will get to a low-carbon, no-carbon economy — we’re going to get there because we have to,” he said.

“I am not convinced we’re going to get there in time to do what the scientists said, which is avoid the worst consequences of the crisis,” he added.

“And those worst consequences are going to affect millions of people all around the world, [in] Africa and other places. Of the 20 most affected countries in the world from [the] climate crisis, 17 are in Africa.”

In his remarks, Kerry also spoke about the task of keeping the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius alive.

“So, how do we get there? Well, the lesson I’ve learned in the last years and I learned it as secretary [of State] and I’ve learned it since, reinforced in spades, is: money, money, money, money, money, money, money. And I’m sorry to say that.”

Actually, I doubt that he is sorry to say that. How many government-subsidized green energy companies is he invested in? You did notice that the majority of the delegates (if not all) to the WEF in Davos flew there in private jets. Where is their effort to save the planet (other than to impose restrictions on the rest of us)?

To illustrate how the political left plans to make money by forcing the rest of us to depend on green energy, please read about the collapse of the Chicago Climate Exchange in 2010 (article here).

That article reports:

“The biggest losers have been CCX’s two biggest investors – Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management and Goldman Sachs – and President Obama, who helped launch CCX with funding from the Joyce Foundation, where he and presidential advisor Valerie Jarrett once sat on the board of directors.”

If you have questions about climate change and global warming, the two best sources of truth are Joe Bastardi and Anthony Watts. Joe Bastardi has written a number of books about climate cycles and how they impact our weather, and Anthony Watts blogs at wattsupwtihthat.com. Both authors provide scientifically valid information on the earth’s climate.

I Can’t Believe He Said That

On Tuesday, Wattsupwiththat posted a video of John Kerry speaking about climate change at Davos. I can’t figure out how to put the video here, but if you follow the link above, you can watch the video.

This is the transcript:

0:00 And when you stop and think about it, it’s pretty extraordinary that we select group of human beings because of whatever touched us at some point in our lives, are able to sit in a room and come together and actually talk about saving the planet.

0:20 I mean, it’s so almost extraterrestrial to think about, quote saving the planet.

0:26 If you said that to most people, most people they think you’re just a crazy tree hugging lefty, liberal, you know, do good or whatever, and and there’s no relationship.

0:35 But really, that’s where we are.

The elite echo chamber at Davos is nothing more than an elite echo chamber. The scientists who disagree with the elite echo chamber are marginalized or silenced. The green energy movement is killing people and wildlife as the elites go on their merry way. They are not going to save the planet–they are simply going to make life more difficult for the rest of us.

An International Propaganda Effort

On Wednesday, Fox News posted the following headline, “Biden admin is funding foreign reporters to write climate stories, emails show.”

The article reports:

The Biden administration funded a foreign “reporting tour” last year, sponsoring several overseas journalists who cover climate change, internal State Department emails showed. 

In March 2021, high-ranking State Department officials discussed a proposal to sponsor foreign journalists to “have experiences that educate them on reporting on climate change,” according to the emails obtained by Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) and shared with Fox News Digital. In the email exchange, officials from Special Presidential Envoy for Climate (SPEC) John Kerry’s office and the Office of Global Change (EGC) praised the program as a “fantastic” and “great” idea.

“Jean Foschetti at the FPC mentioned this to me about a week ago,” a State Department official whose name was redacted wrote in an email on March 23, 2021. “Sounds like a great reporting tour idea; basically, the FPC will sponsor multiple foreign reporters to have experiences that educate them on reporting on climate change. Can EGC and SPEC take a look and clear?”

“Thanks for sharing … I think this sounds like a fantastic FPC (virtual) reporting tour and I’m looking forward to the stories that will come out of this,” a second redacted official responded one day later.

The article continues:

The FPC reporting tour — titled “Combating the Climate Crisis Through U.S. Innovation” — ultimately took place during a two-week stretch in May 2021. The event was designed to “promote the Administration’s goal of prioritizing the fight against climate change through global efforts to reduce emissions,” according to the State Department.

“The FPC … offered this virtual program to enable journalists to remotely develop their reporting about the United States’ renewed approach to addressing the climate crisis and its innovation and research, particularly in the areas of reducing emissions and renewable energy,” the State Department states on its website. 

While the State Department quietly announced the program in 2021, though, it failed to mention that it would be funded by U.S. taxpayer money or that the foreign reporters would be “sponsored.” It is unclear which reporters and outlets were sponsored by the State Department program.

The tour came as the Biden administration was moving forward with its aggressive green energy and climate push.

Evidently Twitter was not the only government-funded propaganda campaign. We need to put a stop to all green energy programs until we make sure that our current energy infrastructure can meet the growing energy needs of Americans. It should be pointed out that the unregulated flow of immigrants into America will also increase the energy needs of America. Windmills, solar panels, and electric cars are at the mercy of the weather–does the sun shine, is it too cold for windmills to turn, and how far will your electric car travel in zero degree weather? They may play a role, but they should not be major players until the technology is greatly improved.

About That Transparency Thing…

John Kerry has been a figure in American politics since the 1970’s when he appeared before Congress to condemn America’s actions during the War in Vietnam. He has served in Congress, as Secretary of State, and run for President. He is currently the Climate Czar in the Biden administration. Inquiring minds want to know how much he is being paid to be the Climate Czar. Washington isn’t talking.

The Daily Wire posted an article on Sunday asking how much John Kerry is being paid. He is a government employee. Shouldn’t his salary be part of the public record?

The article reports:

John Kerry, President Joe Biden’s White House climate czar, flies around the globe in a gas-guzzling jet warning refugees that the worst is yet to come if the world does not stop emitting carbon dioxide into the air. It is unclear how much he is paid or who is on his office’s staff — which is odd, because the United States taxpayer is footing the bill for his travel and salary. After the Boston Herald was told by the government to submit a Freedom of Information Act request to find out that information, Alaska Republican Senator Dan Sullivan is demanding answers.

On Thursday, Boston radio legend Howie Carr interviewed Sullivan on his daily radio show. Carr informed the senator that Kerry’s office told the Herald — where Carr also writes a column — that they would have to submit a FOIA request and could expect to hear back by 2024 to find out how much money Kerry is taking in from government coffers.

“What? … That should be public. My salary is online,” Sullivan responded. “The Secretary of State’s is online, and the president is, too.”

When presented with the FOIA request, the State Department replied that the Herald’s request did not meet the standards for an expedited response. An answer would be provided by 2024.

Please follow the link above for further details on the response from the State Department.

 

 

 

Priorities?

On Thursday, The Daily Caller posted an article by Victor Davis Hanson that provides some perspective on the current war in Ukraine.

The article notes:

Thousands are dying from Russian missiles and bombs in the suburbs of Ukraine.

In response, the Biden administration’s climate change envoy, multimillionaire and private-jet-owning John Kerry, laments that Russian President Vladimir Putin might no longer remain his partner in reducing global warming.

“You’re going to lose people’s focus,” Kerry frets. “You’re going to lose big-country attention because they will be diverted, and I think it could have a damaging impact.”

“Impact”?

Did the global moralist Kerry mean by “impact” the over 650 Russian missiles that impacted Ukrainian buildings and tore apart children?

The article also asks the obvious question:

But how will the Biden administration square the circle of its own ideological war against oil and natural gas versus handing the advantage to our oil- and gas-producing enemies, as Russia invades Ukraine?

Or put another way, when selfish theory hits deadly reality, who loses? Answer: the American people.

President Joe Biden lifted U.S. sanctions on the Russian-German Nord Stream 2 pipeline designed to provide green Germany with loathsome, but life-saving, natural gas.

But first Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline in the United States. He has no problem with pipelines per se, just American ones.

While Biden doesn’t like the idea of Germany burning carbon fuel, or Putin reaping enormous profits from Berlin’s self-created dependency, or Germans importing liquified natural gas from America, Biden also does not like the idea of forcing German families to turn off their thermostats in mid-winter when there is Russian-fed war not far from Germany’s borders.

Here at home, Biden gets even crazier. As our enemies around the world reap huge profits from record high oil and gas prices, did Biden ask Alaska, North Dakota or Texas to ramp up production?

In other words, did he ask Americans to save fellow cash-strapped Americans from a self-created energy crisis, in the way he assured the Germans that during war reality trumps theory?

The article concludes:

Biden also has beseeched the once sanctioned, terrorist Iranian government. He wants Tehran to help us out by upping the very oil and gas production that America has tried to curtail for years. In return, Iran is demanding a new “Iran Deal” that will soon ensure the now petro-rich theocracy the acquisition of nuclear weapons.

On the eve of the Russian invasion, Biden begged Putin to pump even more oil to supplement its current Russian imports to the United States.

Did Putin see that surreal request as yet another sign of American appeasement that might greenlight his upcoming planned invasion? In Russian eyes, was it more proof of American weakness and craziness after the humiliating flight from Afghanistan?

Biden has blasted the human rights record of Saudi Arabia’s royal family. Now he is begging the monarchy to pump more of its despised carbon-spewing oil to make up for what his administration shut down at home. Is that why the Saudi royals refused to take his call?

The moral of Biden’s oil madness?

Elite ideology divorced from reality impoverishes people and can get them killed.

Because we have given up American energy independence (and the ability to supply Europe with energy), we are funding Russia’s war on Ukraine. Until our leaders are willing to acknowledge that fact, I don’t see the war in Ukraine ending or the war on American energy ending.

A Little Gratitude Would Be Appreciated

Yesterday The Daily Caller posted an article about an Afghan interpreter referred to as Mohammed.

The article reports:

An interpreter who reportedly helped save Joe Biden and Antony Blinken after their helicopter was forced to make an emergency landing during a snowstorm was left behind in Afghanistan following the U.S. withdrawal, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Tuesday.

“I can’t leave my house. I’m very scared,” the interpreter, identified only as Mohammed, told WSJ. Mohammed added that although he, his wife, and his four children were able to make it to the gates of Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA), his wife and children were denied entry.

Mohammed was serving at Bagram Air Base in 2008, when a pair of Black Hawk helicopters carrying then-Democratic Sens. Joe Biden of Delaware and John Kerry of Massachusetts, and then-Republican Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, was forced by a snowstorm to land in a valley that was near the site of a recent battle. Blinken, then a foreign policy adviser to Biden, was also on the trip, according to CNN.

The translator joined the 82nd Airborne Division, driving into the mountains to rescue the group.

Mohammed reportedly fought in more than 100 firefights along with American troops.

“His selfless service to our military men and women is just the kind of service I wish more Americans displayed,” Lt. Col. Andrew R. Till wrote in support of Mohammed’s Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) application.

The withdrawal from Afghanistan is a disgrace. The military strategists who approved this plan need to be relieved of their positions. The difference in what has happened under President Biden and the fact that no American was killed in Afghanistan for eighteen months under President Trump is the concept of ‘Peace through Strength.’ When America projects strength, she can protect her people and innocent people around the world. When America has a weak President, the entire world is in danger. It is my hope that American and the world can survive the Biden administration.

This Is Troubling, But Not Surprising

Yesterday PJ Media posted the following headline, “REPORT: Former Obama Staff Colluded With Iran to Undermine Trump.” This is not really a surprise. There were a lot of Democrats and Republican who sought to undermine Trump. We heard a lot of talk about a ‘peaceful transition of power’ when Joe Biden was elected, but we need to understand that there was no ‘peaceful transition of power’ when President Trump was elected. President Obama remained in Washington, D.C., and from his command center threw every obstacle he could into the path of President Trump with full compliance from the media. The antics of the Democrats, some swamp-dwelling Republicans, and the media from 2015 until 2020 are a disgrace to our republic.

The article reports:

Former Obama administration officials, including former Secretary of State John Kerry, went behind President Donald Trump’s back in backchannels with Iran, sources told The Washington Times. Some of the architects of the Iran nuclear deal met with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif after Trump withdrew from the deal.

A slew of former Obama officials, including Kerry, Obama’s Middle East advisor Robert Malley, and Obama-era Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, met with Zarif during the Trump years. Kerry, Malley, and Moniz led negotiations in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in which the U.S. provided sanctions relief and access to tens of billions of dollars in frozen bank accounts in exchange for Iran’s promises to limit nuclear enrichment.

Trump pulled the U.S. out of the deal in 2018, citing the need for a tougher agreement that also addressed Iran’s support for terrorist groups and its destabilizing behavior in the Middle East. Yet a former senior U.S. official told The Washington Times that Zarif met with Democrats like Kerry multiple times in 2017, 2018, and 2019, before the Trump administration halted his visa in 2020.

The former official told the Times that Zarif’s meetings aimed “to devise a political strategy to undermine the Trump administration” and to build support for a new version of the Iran deal in case a Democrat returned to the White House in 2021.

Kerry acknowledged meeting with Zarif at least twice in the early years of the Trump administration. He told radio host Hugh Hewitt that there was nothing secret about his meetings with the Iranian minister. Kerry said he intended to find out “what Iran might be willing to do in order to change the dynamic in the Middle East for the better.”

Kerry was a private citizen at that time; he had no authority to represent America in any way or to meet with foreign leaders in any capacity.

The article concludes:

“Former administration officials can play a very helpful role in close coordination with a sitting administration to open and support sensitive diplomatic channels,” Mark Dubowitz, chief executive at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Times. “But it is not good practice for senior officials who served at the highest levels of a former administration, Democratic or Republican, to be trying to undermine the policy of a sitting administration by engaging actively with a known enemy of the United States.”

Indeed, Malley was reportedly engaging in this “shadow diplomacy” while Iran-backed militias targeted U.S. troops in Iraq, leading up to the assassination of Quds Force General Qasem Soleimani in January 2020.

Sources also told The Washington Times that Zarif wields tremendous influence over the Iran lobby in the U.S. They described a “web” of activity linked to think tanks across the U.S. as well as lobbying efforts that reached into the Obama White House.

Many members of Congress, including Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), have hired current or former staffers with the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC), an organization with links to Iran’s regime and which Iran state media has described as “Iran’s lobby” in the U.S.

Did the Obama administration architects of the Iran deal carry out a “shadow diplomacy” with the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism in order to undermine President Trump, hoping that a Democrat would win in 2020 and return them to power? Did they work with the Iran lobby behind the scenes? This explosive report suggests the answers to those questions are “yes,” but the details are yet to be forthcoming.

Where is the Logan Act when you actually need it?

So Why Are We Doing This?

In a rare moment of honesty by a politician, President Biden’s climate czar, John Kerry, stated that America’s reducing its carbon emissions to zero wouldn’t really make a difference in the fight against climate change. Wow. So why are we wrecking the American economy for no apparent reason? I really don’t have a problem with virtue signalling as long as it doesn’t actually harm anyone, but this is going to hurt a lot of Americans–many Americans that the Biden administration promised to help.

The New York Post posted an article about the statement yesterday.

The article reports:

Kerry’s remarks were made ahead of Biden’s signing of a host of executive actions on Wednesday pushing his $2 trillion Green New Deal-inspired climate agenda.

“He knows Paris alone is not enough,” Kerry told reporters at a White House press briefing, referring to Biden re-entering the US in the Paris Climate Agreement in one of his first acts as president.

“Not when almost 90 percent of all of the planet’s global emissions come from outside of US borders. We could go to zero tomorrow and the problem isn’t solved,” Kerry conceded.

The former secretary of state, now Biden’s climate envoy, acknowledged that it would be difficult to bring the world’s top polluters to the table, including China, which produces 30 percent of the world’s carbon emissions.

Why is a man with a private jet and a yacht lecturing us on carbon footprints and climate change?

Not A Cabinet I Would Vote For

The deep state wants its power back. They see the road to that power in the election of Joe Biden as President. As the campaign continues, there are some valid questions as to whether or not Joe Biden is mentally up to the task of being President, but that hasn’t slowed the momentum of the deep state in trying to put him there.

Breitbart posted an article today based on an article in Axios, a liberal-leaning source, about possible cabinet picks by a President Biden.

The article notes:

…Many of the names would return from the Obama administration, constituting an effective “third term.”

Axios says that former Secretary of State John Kerry could return in that role, or be appointed to a new Cabinet-level climate change position.

Former National Security Advisor Susan Rice — who was never nominated for Secretary of State because of fears she would not survive confirmation after misleading the nation about the Benghazi attacks — could find her way to that position in a potential Biden administration, Axios claims.

There would also be room in the Biden Cabinet for some of his former 2020 rivals, including former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who could be UN ambassador, or U.S. trade representative.

Several are also currently under consideration, Axios reports, to be Biden’s running mate, including Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Kamala Harris (D-CA). The final choice may be up to Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), who delivered the key endorsement that helped Biden win South Carolina and change the direction of the entire Democratic primary.

Susan Rice lied about Benghazi; John Kerry lied about the Iran deal. President Obama did serious damage to the American economy in eight years because of over-regulation and increased taxes. Do we really want to bring the deep state back into power?

The Quest For Relevance

Yesterday National Review reported  that former secretary of state John Kerry has endorsed Joe Biden for President. John Kerry cited Biden’s performance serving as vice president in the Obama administration as proof that he has what it takes to defeat President Trump. Wow. I don’t know where to start.

The article reports:

“The world is broken,” Kerry told The Washington Post. “Our politics are broken. The country faces extraordinary challenges. And I believe very deeply that Joe Biden’s character, his ability to persevere, his decency and the experiences that he brings to the table are critical to the moment. The world has to be put back together, the world that Donald Trump has smashed apart.”

Kerry’s announcement comes a week after news broke that former president Barack Obama reportedly said Biden “really doesn’t have it” in establishing a bond with the electorate.

Kerry seemingly disagreed with his former boss in describing Biden, calling him “the person for the moment.”

This is an amazing statement. John Kerry was elected to the United States Senate in 1984. He was sworn in as Secretary of State in February 2013. Joe Biden was a Senator from 1973 to 2009. President Donald Trump entered politics in 2015. If ‘the world is broken,’ I would tend to put the responsibility for that on those who have been in power for the longest time–not on the new kid on the block.

The Mainstream Media vs. The Truth

Yesterday Newsbusters posted an article highlighting more dishonest reporting from The New York Times.

The article reports:

Seven weeks ago, after the White House released its official summary of a July 25 phone call between President Trump and the Ukrainian President, the New York Times noted that the two had previously spoken on April 21 and wrote the following about that conversation:

When Ukraine elected its new leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, on April 21, Mr. Trump seized on the moment as an opportunity to press his case….He urged Mr. Zelensky to coordinate with Mr. Giuliani and to pursue investigations of “corruption,” according to people familiar with the call, the details of which have not previously been reported.

On Friday morning, the White House released its official summary of that earlier call, and it completely debunked the Times reporting that appeared in a front-page September 26 article. The official summary shows a light-hearted conversation about Zelensky’s election victory, Trump’s promise that a “very, very high level” delegation would attend his inauguration, and an invitation for Zelensky to visit the White House.

There’s not the slightest indication that he “seized on the moment as an opportunity to press his case,” nor any reference to Joe Biden, Rudy Giuliani, or anything else suggested in the Times story.

The Times account of the today’s White House release is silent on the Times earlier, apparently false reporting. But it does complain about how “a White House readout of the call in April provides a different account.”

Reporters Mark Mazzetti and Eileen Sullivan point out: “In that summary, provided to reporters shortly after the call took place, the administration said that Mr. Trump promised to work with Zelensky to ‘implement reforms that strengthen democracy, increase prosperity and root out corruption.’”

Indeed, today’s White House release does contradict the White House report released at the time of the call, but the erroneous September 26 Times’ story does not rely on the “readout” as the basis for its wrong claims, but rather “people familiar with the call.”

In other words, the Times can’t blame the White House for its mistake in September. That’s all on them, and their anonymous source. (Maybe secret sources aren’t the best sources after all.)

There is agreement that there was corruption in Ukraine. There is also agreement that the corruption needed to be cleaned up.

A friend of mine who is a lawyer who follows these events very closely recently wrote:

Then I discovered that the day after VP Joe Biden bribed the Ukraine government into firing the Prosecutor who was investigating his son’s company, the Ukraine court released $23 million the government had seized as part of the investigation. Nobody knows what happened to the $23 million.

What we do know is the $23 million was part of the $50 Million in USAid that 26 Democrats shepherded through the United States Congress in 2014. All 26 received campaign contributions from Ukraine’s new lobbyist: Secretary of State John Kerry’s former chief of staff. How dare the President look into changing the USA’s foreign Policy!

Do you really wonder where the missing money ended up?

Maybe it’s time to take a really good look at where our foreign aid actually goes.

Ever Wonder About Polls?

Earlier this week, Fox News released a poll that stated that 51 percent of voters favored the impeachment of President Trump. That seemed odd for a number of reasons. Fair-minded Americans haven’t really been given a reason that President Trump deserves impeachment–all the the (expensive) Democrat schemes have come up empty. Most Americans view impeachment as a rather drastic step. Also, there is very little indication that the people who voted for President Trump regret their vote, and there seem to be indications that as his policies succeed, the President is gaining more support. The poll was suspicious at best. Well, Yesterday The New York Post posted an analysis of the poll.

Here is some of what they found:

Princeton, New Jersey, pollster Braun Research, which conducted the survey, noted 48% of its respondents were Democrats. But the actual breakdown of party-affiliation is 31% Democrat, 29% Republican and 38% independent, according to Gallup.

A poll weighted for party affiliation would have concluded that 44.9% favored impeachment and 44.4% opposed it, a Post analysis has concluded.

I truly doubt that the support for impeachment is actually that high. Knowing that the pollster messed with the demographics, I wonder how he phrased the questions. Never believe anything you see in a poll. Remember, according to various polls, we would have had a President John Kerry and a President Hillary Clinton. I guess the polls have been inaccurate for a while.

A List The Media Does Not Want You To See

Breitbart posted an article today titled, “Five Times Hunter Biden’s Business Dealings Presented a Conflict of Interest for Joe Biden.”

Please follow the link to the article for the details, but here is the list:

1. Joe Biden’s top campaign contributor hired Hunter fresh out of law school.

The article notes that credit card issuer MBNA Corp. hired Hunter Biden for an undisclosed position, despite the fact that Hunter had no background in either banking or business. Hunter Biden left the company in 1998 to join the Clinton-era Commerce Department it was as a senior vice president.

2. Hunter Biden was on MBNA’s payroll while Joe Biden was writing bankruptcy reform legislation. 

3. Hunter Biden sought to monetize off his father’s political standing on Wall Street. 

In 2006, shortly before Joe Biden assumed the chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and launched his second presidential campaign, Hunter purchased a hedge fund called Paradigm Global Advisors with his uncle, James. Although neither had a strong background in finance, James and Hunter believed they could leverage Joe Biden’s political connections to their benefit.

“Don’t worry about investors,” James Biden, the former vice president’s younger brother, purportedly told Paradigm’s senior leadership upon taking over the fund, as reported by Politico. “We’ve got people all around the world who want to invest in Joe Biden.”

This sort of philosophy might explain why many of our Congressmen enter Congress as members of the Middle Class and leave as millionaires.

4. Hunter Biden’s firm scored a $1.5 billion deal with the Bank of China only days after his father paid an official visit to the country. 

Peter Schweizer’s book Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends gives the details of the transaction.

5. The Obama-Biden administration helped facilitate the sale of U.S. company with insight into military technology to BHR and a Chinese state-owned defense firm. 

…The sale required approval from the Obama-Biden administration’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) as AVIC was a subsidiary of the Chinese government and Henniges produced “dual-use” anti-vibration technology with U.S. “military applications.” CFIUS, which is made up of representatives from 16 different federal bodies including the departments of State, Treasury, and Defense, is required to review any transaction with national security implications.

When the AVIC and BHR’s bid was first announced, alarm bells went off in certain sectors of the defense industry. In particular, many noted that AVIC was “reportedly involved in stealing sensitive data regarding the Joint Strike Fighter program,” which it later “reportedly incorporated … into China’s J-20 and J‑31 aircraft.”

Despite the national security concerns, CFIUS approved the deal with AVIC purchasing 51 percent of the company and BHR taking ownership of the other 49 percent. Upon purchase, an industry newsletter stated the deal was the “biggest Chinese investment into US automotive manufacturing assets to date.”

Although the deal was approved by the Obama administration, it has not escaped congressional scrutiny. In August, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) launched a probe into whether or not the CFIUS decision was influenced by either Joe Biden or former Secretary of State John Kerry, whose stepson was also involved in the venture.

“The direct involvement of Mr. Hunter Biden and Mr. Heinz in the acquisition of Henniges by the Chinese government creates a potential conflict of interest,” Grassley noted when launching the probe.

Become a public servant and help your family become wealthy. Somehow I don’t think that is what servanthood is about.

The Name Not Usually Mentioned

As we wade through the fertilizer the mainstream media is scattering about Hunter Biden’s job working with the Ukraine, we also hear that one of Hunter Biden’s business partners was Christopher Heinz. (Note: The Washington Examiner posted an article on August 27, 2019, stating that after the Ukrainian deal, Christopher Heinz cut his business ties with Hunter Biden). The was also another person involved in the Ukrainian transactions.

On May 13, 2019. The Washington Free Beacon reported:

Former vice president Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden partnered with infamous mobster Whitey Bulger’s nephew and former secretary of state John Kerry’s stepson for his lucrative business deal with the Bank of China, according to reporter Peter Schweizer’s latest book.

Schweizer points to the business deal with state-owned Bank of China, a $1.5 billion private equity investment, as a possible reason why the current presidential candidate has adopted a conciliatory attitude toward China. The lucrative deal between the Bank of China and Hunter Biden’s company was inked in 2013 just weeks after Joe Biden brought his son along on an official trip to China.

Schweizer also lays out the interesting cast of characters who partnered with Biden for the deal, such as the Thornton Group consulting firm, which is headed by James Bulger. The son of Massachusetts state senator Billy Bulger, James is named after his uncle James “Whitey” Bulger, who was killed in prison late last year after a decades-long career in the mob that landed him on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

Also partnered with Biden is Chris Heinz, the stepson of John Kerry. Biden and Heinz control Rosemont Seneca Partners, the private equity firm that received billions of investment dollars from China.

The cast of characters in this story is very interesting.

The following video is posted at YouTube. I am posting it here in case YouTube removes it. It is Joe Biden bragging about stopping the Ukrainians from investigating the company his son was involved with.

Meanwhile the media is attempting to blame President Trump for talking to the Ukrainian leadership about corruption.

This Latest Attempt To Smear The President May Not End Well For Those Promoting It

The Gateway Pundit posted an article yesterday about the latest scandal the media has concocted to damage President Trump. The scandal is related to something a whistle-blower heard President Trump discuss with a foreign leader. Of course all of the details are being leaked out strategically by the media in a fashion to hurt the President, but there are a few details we already know that are more damaging to the media.

The article reports:

After leaving office in 2017, Vice President Joe Biden Bragged about strong-arming the government of Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor.

Joe Biden made the remarks during a meeting of foreign policy specialists. Biden said he, “Threatened Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in March 2016 that the Obama administration would pull $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees, sending the former Soviet republic toward insolvency, if it didn’t immediately fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.” Biden suggested during his talk that Barack Obama was in on the threat.

In April John Solomon revealed what Biden did not tell his audience. Joe Biden had Poroshenko fired because he was investigating Joe Biden’s son Hunter.

 Poroshenko was investigating $3 million in funds that were being transferred out of Ukraine and into accounts in the United States at that time.
Joe Biden had him fired.

In May President Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani said in an interview that he plans to travel to Ukraine to push the country’s leadership on several probes that may prove “very, very helpful” to President Trump, as Republicans continue looking to turn the tables on Democrats and prove that they — not the GOP — were the party that improperly conspired with foreign actors.

This is a very awkward situation. It is appropriate for President Trump to tell Ukraine to clean up their corruption. The difficulty occurs when that corruption involves the son of someone currently leading in the Democrat presidential primary elections. At that point the appearance of a political motive becomes a problem. However, political motive or not, Joe Biden’s statement creates a problem for the Democrats. If Joe Biden’s son was involved in illegal international transactions during the time that Joe Biden was Vice-President, does that end the candidacy of Joe Biden for President? It’s the Democrat party, so it might not.

However, it is time that we dealt with politicians or their families getting rich because of their offices.

In August 2019, The Washington Examiner reported:

John Kerry’s stepson rushed to play damage control at the State Department after his business partner Hunter Biden cut a deal with an oligarch-owned Ukrainian gas company in 2014, according to internal State Department correspondence obtained by the Washington Examiner.

The correspondence adds to the questions about Biden’s business activities, which have dogged the 2020 Democratic primary campaign of his father Joe. Hunter Biden’s long history of drug and alcohol abuse, which contributed to his divorce and his dismissal from the Navy Reserve, has also attracted unwelcome publicity for the Democratic front-runner.

An email released to the Washington Examiner shows that Biden’s decision to join the board of Ukraine’s Burisma Holdings sparked immediate concern within his inner circle about the political optics. Biden’s father Joe — now vying for the 2020 Democratic Party nomination — was then vice president and overseeing the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy.

At the time, Hunter Biden, now 49, and Christopher Heinz, the stepson of then-Secretary of State John Kerry, co-owned Rosemont Seneca Partners, a $2.4 billion private equity firm. Heinz’s college roommate, Devon Archer, was managing partner in the firm. In the spring of 2014, Biden and Archer joined the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian gas company that was at the center of a U.K. money laundering probe. Over the next year, Burisma reportedly paid Biden and Archer’s companies over $3 million.

Joe Biden is not responsible for his son’s misdeeds, but he is responsible for blocking an investigation into those misdeeds.

This scandal may turn out to be one the Democrats wish they hadn’t mentioned.

The Actual History Behind The Country Of Israel

Michael Oren is Israel‘s Deputy Minister for Diplomacy. On Tuesday he was interviewed by Hugh Hewitt on the subject of U.N. Resolution 2334, the Resolution that declared Israeli ‘settlements’ in parts of Israel illegal. Hugh Hewitt posted a transcript of the interview.

This is a highlight from the interview that explains why Resolution 2334 is neither appropriate or helpful:

HH: I have to begin by asking, you’re such a great historian, will you reset what the dispute over the territory is and why the Western Wall is not occupied territory, as the UN Resolution 2332 declares it to be?

MO: It’s, okay, I’ll try to do it as quickly as possible. In 1947, the UN declared that Palestine, as it was then known, would be partitioned into two states – an Arab state and an Jewish state. Notice, not a Palestinian state, but an Arab state. The Palestinians didn’t quite exist, yet, and at least not on the international radar. And the Arabs went to war to destroy the Jewish state when it was created on May 14, 1948. And the city of Jerusalem was divided. The eastern part of the city was occupied by the Jordanians, the West Bank was occupied by the Jordanians. In June, 1967, the Jordanians attacked Israel again. Israel repulsed the attack, reunited Jerusalem under Israeli rule, and captured the West Bank, or as we call it, Judea and Samaria. It is not occupied by international law, because the West Bank and East Jerusalem was never part of a recognized sovereign country. Nobody in the world, except for Britain and Pakistan, recognized the Jordanian annexation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. So the entire international law claim is spurious. But when Israel reunited the city and reunited the city, the Western Wall is in the eastern part of the city. The old city is in the eastern part of the city. We certainly can’t consider our homeland for 3,000 years to be occupied territory. You know, tell a member of the Sioux Nation that his tribal lands are occupied and he can’t live on them. That’s what the UN is telling us. They’re telling us more than that, that by living in them, we’re criminals.

HH: Yeah, this audience has heard Steven Pressfield talk about The Lion’s Gate, the book that will bring people to tears. And you’ve talked about it in your histories as well. It just is absurd. So what happened? Why would the United States do this? And what was the United States’ role in Resolution 2332, which was not vetoed in a breach of American policy that is as bad for the country of Israel as it is for the Palestinians and indeed the world?

MO: It’s bad for the world, and it’s bad for the United States, too, Hugh, and I’ll explain why. The American role was to stand back and let Israel take a tremendous hit, a tremendous hit that will expose us to sanctions and boycotts. It will kill the peace process. It will deliver a deadly, deadly blow to the people of the Middle East who look to the UN for salvation and get absolutely none at a time when hundreds of thousands of people are being massacred here. What does the UN do? It beats up on the Middle East’s only democracy. And America’s role, according to Prime Minister Netanyahu, was to cook it all up and to do some arm twisting and make it happen? Why? The Obama administration did this, I can recommend another book, I can’t do that because I’m in government, where it explains the Obama’s worldview, a worldview that sees the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the core conflict of the Middle East, sees the core of that conflict, the settlement and the occupation, as he calls it, and was going to do his utmost to his last day in office to discredit and delegitimize Israel for our position in settling our homeland and reuniting our ancestral capital, Jerusalem.

This resolution essentially states that Jews building houses on their own land is an obstacle to peace. Somehow it overlooks the fact that rockets fired into Israel from the Gaza Strip might be an obstacle to peace. Somehow it overlooks the fact that Hamas and the PLO have never acknowledged Israel’s right to exist–that might be an obstacle to peace.

It is a shame that this resolution was passed. If peace is possible in the Middle East, this resolution will make it more difficult to achieve. It is difficult to make peace with people whose goal is ‘to drive you into the sea,’ which has been the stated goal of the Arab nations surrounding Israel since 1948 when Israel became a nation. It is even more unfortunate that nations who generally support freedom do not support the only free country in the Middle East where Jews and Arabs have equal rights and religious freedom.The Israeli model of equal rights is the only path to peace in the Middle East, and the United Nations just threw a giant obstacle in that path.

Following The Money

There have been a lot of stories told about the $400 million that was paid to Iran (coincidentally just as some American hostages were being released). Yesterday Claudia Rosett posted an article in the New York Sun that offers an interesting explanation as to where the $400 million came from.

The article reports:

Congressional investigators trying to uncover the trail of $1.3 billion in payments to Iran might want to focus on 13 large, identical sums that Treasury paid to the State Department under the generic heading of settling “Foreign Claims.”

The 13 payments when added to the $400 million that the administration now concedes it shipped to the Iranian regime in foreign cash would bring the payout to the $1.7 billion that President Obama and Secretary Kerry announced on January 17. That total was to settle a dispute pending for decades before the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal in at The Hague.

…The Judgment Fund has long been a controversial vehicle for federal agencies to detour past one of the most pointed prohibitions in the Constitution: “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.”

The Judgment Fund, according to a Treasury Department Web site, is “a permanent, indefinite appropriation” used to pay monetary awards against U.S. government agencies in cases “where funds are not legally available to pay the award from the agency’s own appropriations.”

In March, in letters responding to questions about the Iran settlement sent weeks earlier by Representatives Edward Royce and Mike Pompeo, the State Department confirmed that the $1.3 billion “interest” portion of the Iran settlement had been paid out of the Judgment Fund. But State gave no information on the logistics.

Aside from the fact that we are funding a regime that is using the money to fund attacks against American civilians and servicemen, I would like to note that the Tribunal at the Hague decided that America owned money to a known sponsor of terrorism. Based on that decision, I don’t think the Tribunal at The Hague is force for global peace. Giving money to a known sponsor of terrorism is not a good idea under any circumstances.

Killing Our Own Soldiers With Taxpayer Money

On June 9, Bloomberg.com posted an article about one unfortunate result of President Obama’s treaty with Iran.

In January, the U.S. Treasury transferred $1.7 billion to Iran’s Central Bank. Last month Iran’s Guardian Council approved an Iranian 2017 budget that instructed Iran’s Central Bank to transfer the $1.7 to the military.

The article reports:

Saeed Ghasseminejad, an associate fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, spotted the budget item. He told me the development was widely reported in Iran by numerous sources including the state-funded news services. “Article 22 of the budget for 2017 says the Central Bank is required to give the money from the legal settlement of Iran’s pre- and post-revolutionary arms sales of up to $1.7 billion to the defense budget,” he said. 

Republicans and some Democrats who opposed Obama’s nuclear deal have argued that the end of some sanctions would help to fund Iran’s military. But at least that was Iran’s money already (albeit frozen in overseas bank accounts). The $1.7 billion that Treasury transferred to Iran in January is different.

A portion of it, $400 million, came from a trust fund comprising money paid by the government of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a U.S. ally, for arms sold to Iran before the 1979 revolution. Those sales were cut off in 1979 after revolutionaries took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held the American staff hostage for 444 days. The remaining $1.3 billion represents interest on the $400 million principle over more than 36 years.

The article notes that we are already subsidizing defense spending for Egypt and Israel. Essentially we are supplying money for arms to both sides in the Middle East. How does this ever lead to peace? Anyone who understands the Middle East also knows that at least some of this money will be used against U.S. soldiers. Why are we funding the enemy that is killing our soldiers?

The article concludes:

The irony here is that Iran has been pleading poverty in recent months. The country’s supreme leader and foreign minister have publicly complained that Iran’s economy has not seen the benefits expected from the Iran nuclear deal. And yet Iran’s 2017 $19 billion defense budget has increased by 90 percent from 2016, according to Ghasseminejad.

We now know where $1.7 billion of that came from.

Does This Matter To You?

On Sunday, The New York Times posted an interview with President Obama’s foreign policy guru Ben Rhodes. Ben Rhodes was an aspiring novelist who somehow became a major player in President Obama’s foreign policy. There are a few very telling remarks in the interview.

This is The New York Times description of Ben Rhodes’ job:

The job he was hired to do, namely to help the president of the United States communicate with the public, was changing in equally significant ways, thanks to the impact of digital technologies that people in Washington were just beginning to wrap their minds around. It is hard for many to absorb the true magnitude of the change in the news business — 40 percent of newspaper-industry professionals have lost their jobs over the past decade — in part because readers can absorb all the news they want from social-media platforms like Facebook, which are valued in the tens and hundreds of billions of dollars and pay nothing for the “content” they provide to their readers. You have to have skin in the game — to be in the news business, or depend in a life-or-death way on its products — to understand the radical and qualitative ways in which words that appear in familiar typefaces have changed. Rhodes singled out a key example to me one day, laced with the brutal contempt that is a hallmark of his private utterances. “All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus,” he said. “Now they don’t. They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”

Therefore, it is very easy to lie to reporters. Great. Thanks for doing you job of informing American voters–instead you have chosen to mislead them.

The New York Daily News posted a story on Saturday about the role that Ben Rhodes played in the Iran nuclear deal.

The New York Daily News reports:

Looking far down the road to regional domination, Iran’s radical Islamist leaders made a calculated decision to present a less menacing face to the world.

No longer, for example, would the country’s secular leadership vow the annihilation of Israel and rail against the Great Satan United States.

Worldly President Hassan Rouhani, who earned a Ph.D. in Scotland, took office in 2013, declaring an intention to engage with the West. Foreign minister Mohammad Zarif, educated at American universities, cultivated a close relationship with Secretary of State John Kerry.

Here, finally, were moderates with whom the U.S. could negotiate as President Obama sought to normalize relations with a sworn enemy.

So the Iranian propaganda went as the mullahs hoped for relief from economic sanctions via a nuclear deal with the U.S. and Western powers.

Why would anyone believe such obvious nonsense? One reason — in fact the key reason — is that Obama joined Iran in knowingly peddling the same false propaganda to America, according to an extraordinarily revealing New York Times profile of the President’s deputy national security adviser, Benjamin Rhodes.

“The way in which most Americans have heard the story of the Iran deal presented — that the Obama administration began seriously engaging with Iranian officials in 2013 in order to take advantage of a new political reality in Iran, which came about because of elections that brought moderates to power in that country — was largely manufactured for the purpose for selling the deal,” the profile states, providing evidence aplenty.

“Obama’s closest advisers always understood him to be eager to do a deal with Iran as far back as 2012, and even since the beginning of his presidency,” the profile discloses, quoting Rhodes as saying, “It’s the center of the arc” of an Obama strategy of remaking U.S. relations in the Mideast.

We have exchanged our alliance with Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East that allows freedom of religion, to an alliance with Iran, a country that has vowed to destroy Israel and America. This has been done with the help of Ben Rhodes (and President Obama), who blatantly lied to the American people about pretty much everything involved in the nuclear deal with Iran.

On Monday, The Federalist posted an article about Ben Rhodes and the Iran nuclear deal. The article included a chart based on a Gallop Poll of American opinion of Iran.

Here is the chart:

IranOpinionWe may have the treaty, but I am not sure the American people are on board.

The New York Times further reports:

As Malley and representatives of the State Department, including Wendy Sherman and Secretary of State John Kerry, engaged in formal negotiations with the Iranians, to ratify details of a framework that had already been agreed upon, Rhodes’s war room did its work on Capitol Hill and with reporters. In the spring of last year, legions of arms-control experts began popping up at think tanks and on social media, and then became key sources for hundreds of often-clueless reporters. “We created an echo chamber,” he admitted, when I asked him to explain the onslaught of freshly minted experts cheerleading for the deal. “They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.”

When I suggested that all this dark metafictional play seemed a bit removed from rational debate over America’s future role in the world, Rhodes nodded. “In the absence of rational discourse, we are going to discourse the [expletive] out of this,” he said. “We had test drives to know who was going to be able to carry our message effectively, and how to use outside groups like Ploughshares, the Iran Project and whomever else. So we knew the tactics that worked.” He is proud of the way he sold the Iran deal. “We drove them crazy,” he said of the deal’s opponents.

This sort of public manipulation is the reason the alternative media has grown. Many Americans are tired of being manipulated and are willing to do their own search for the truth. Unfortunately, the mainstream media has a way of criticizing any opposition to their ideas successfully by using personal attacks and name-calling.

I don’t know what impact this information about the Iran nuclear deal will have on the 2016 election. What I do know is that President Obama sold the national security of America because he wanted a treaty with Iran as part of his legacy. That is a disgrace.

This Is Long Overdue

Happy Saint Patrick‘s Day. As we celebrate the life of Saint Patrick, our State Department, led by John Kerry, has finally acknowledged that there is a genocide going on against Christians in the Middle East.

Fox News reported the following today:

Secretary of State John Kerry declared Thursday that the Islamic State is committing genocide against Christians and other minorities in the Middle East, after facing heavy pressure from lawmakers and rights groups to make the rare designation.

“In my judgment, Daesh is responsible for genocide against groups in territory under its control, including Yazidis, Christians and Shia Muslims,” Kerry said at the State Department. Daesh is another name for the Islamic State.

He accused ISIS of “crimes against humanity” and “ethnic cleansing.”

The announcement was a surprise, at least in terms of the timing. A day earlier, a State Department spokesman said they would miss a congressionally mandated March 17 deadline to make a decision. Yet as the department took heat from lawmakers for the expected delay, the department confirmed Thursday morning that Kerry had reached the decision that Christians, Yazidis and Shiite groups are victims of genocide.

This is not anything new, and it is time we admitted that it was going on. On of the tenets of Islam is conversion by the sword. Under Sharia Law, Christians have three options when their countries are taken over by Muslims–be killed, convert to Islam, or pay the jizya (a tax on Christians and Jews that can be as much as or more than half of their assets). Paying the jizya involves a submission ritual including a blow to the neck where the infidel acknowledges the mercy of the Muslims who have allowed him to live.

Note that this announcement applies to ISIS. If it were done correctly, it would apply to most of the countries in the Middle East. The only country in the Middle East where freedom of religion is allowed is Israel, and our State Department (and the United Nations) has spent years condemning them for various imaginary human rights violations. At least this move by the State Department is in the right direction.

Asking The Wolves To Help Shepherd The Sheep

The Conservative Tribune posted a story today that includes the following:

Now comes the disturbing revelation, apparently delivered by Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, that the Obama administration tipped off the Iranians that our soldiers were lost at sea and requested their aid.

The news came from Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, during an interview on TheBlaze’s Dana Loesch shortly after Iran’s arrest of the sailors had come to light.

“I understand that (Secretary of State) John Kerry has indicated, look, when he got word, he and Ash Carter called the Iranians to help take care of our Navy guys, because they had some mechanical problems,” Gohmert said.

Does this look like helping?

IranSalitorsI have no words.

Is The President Required To Follow The Law?

Scott Johnson posted an article at Power Line today about an aspect of the Iran nuclear deal that has not been widely discussed. It seems that one of the provisions in the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (the Corker-Cardin bill) that was signed by President Obama is that President Obama is required to transmit to Congress the agreement–“including all related materials and annexes.” He is required to do this “not later than five days after reaching the agreement.”

The article reminds us:

Obama has not done so. The administration has failed or refused to submit the IAEA side deal with Iran regarding the possible military dimensions of Iran’s research at the Parchin military facility to Congress.

Indeed, the administration claim not even to have seen the IAEA side deal. Rather, administration officials claim only to have been briefed by the IAEA on the terms of the side deal. They claim it is cloaked in secrecy that prevents its disclosure. The side deal is nevertheless an integral part of the JCPOA and its disclosure expressly required by the act.

So what happens now?

The article reports:

Rep. Mike Pompeo and attorney David Rivkin take note in a brief Washington Post column. They write:

 Congress must now confront the grave issues of constitutional law prompted by the president’s failure to comply with his obligations under the act. This is not the first time this administration has disregarded clear statutory requirements, encroaching in the process upon Congress’s legislative and budgetary prerogatives. The fact that this has happened again in the context of a national security agreement vital to the United States and its allies makes the situation all the more serious.

For Congress to vote on the merits of the agreement without the opportunity to review all of its aspects would both effectively sanction the president’s unconstitutional conduct and be a major policy mistake. Instead, both houses should vote to register their view that the president has not complied with his obligations under the act by not providing Congress with a copy of an agreement between the IAEA and Iran, and that, as a result, the president remains unable to lift statutory sanctions against Iran. Then, if the president ignores this legal limit on his authority, Congress can and should take its case to court.

There is another aspect to this. Democratic Senators do not want to go on the record in terms of voting for this agreement. The agreement is not popular with the American public, who understands that the agreement paves the way for Iran to go nuclear and will start a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. So why in the world is President Obama pushing this treaty? There are a lot of guesses, but no real answer. It would be a feather in his cap to negotiate an agreement with a country that has been at war with America since 1978. The problem is that after the agreement is signed, Iran will still be at war with America. There is no financial gain for America in this treaty–Iran gets more money to fund terrorism and kill American soldiers in Afghanistan. Iran is also allowed to flood the world markets with oil, possibly crippling American efforts at energy independence. There is no upside for America in this treaty–it is a President looking for what he considers a foreign policy accomplishment. He may well get his accomplishment, but it’s a safe bet that history will not look kindly on this treaty.

Money Won’t Make This Better

The Washington Free Beacon reported yesterday on the efforts of Secretary of State John Kerry to sweeten the Iran deal for Israel and Saudi Arabia. Frankly, there are some things you just can’t sweeten.

The article reports:

Kerry admits that, despite the deal, Iran will continue to back terrorist groups across the globe and promises to boost military support and funding to Israel and Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia, according to a copy of the letter obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The letter comes in response to concerns among lawmakers, Israel, and other Gulf region allies that the nuclear accord will boost the Islamic Republic’s support for terrorism, while leaving traditional U.S. allies on the defense.

“Important questions have been raised concerning the need to increase security assistance to our allies and partners in the region and to enhance our efforts to counter Iran’s destabilizing activities in the region,” Kerry writes. “We share the concern expressed by many in Congress regarding Iran’s continued support for terrorist and proxy groups throughout the region, its propping up of the Assad regime in Syria, its efforts to undermine the stability of its regional neighbors, and the threat it poses to Israel.”

The Obama administration, Kerry claims, is under “no illusion that this behavior will change following implementation of the JCPOA,” or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

If the behavior of Iran will not change following the implementation of the JCPOA, then why are we agreeing to the JCPOA? Wouldn’t it be better to refuse to lift any sanctions or give Iran any money until the leaders of Iran change their behavior (and maybe stop shouting “Death to Israel” and “Death to America“)? I admit that I am only a lowly blogger, but that seems rather obvious to me. Why are we going to give Iran access to millions of dollars to buy more and better weapons to kill American soldiers?

The article reports:

One senior Congressional aide who received the letter said that it is a clear attempt by the administration to placate regional fears about the deal.

“Let’s not be fooled about what the letter represents. This desperate move to placate Israel and our Gulf partners is a tacit acknowledgment that Iran will expand its international terror regime thanks to the nuclear agreement,” the source said. “If this is such a good deal, why does the administration feel compelled to immediately offer arms packages as compensation to our regional allies?”

“No amount of conventional weapons can neutralize the threat posed by the mullahs acquiring nuclear weapons,” the source said. “This type of appeasement is a slap in the face to our closets allies and a wink-wink to the dictators in Tehran.”

Obviously there are people in our government who understand the dangers of this agreement. Unfortunately, there are also many people in our government who choose not to listen to them. I believe this agreement will be able to get through the games being played in the Senate and will go into force. I also believe that the day that happens will be a truly sad day for America. We have turned our backs on our friends and chosen to fund our enemies. That is not wisdom.