Tag Archives: Obama administration

Equality vs. Equity

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  • Equality means providing the same resources or opportunities to everyone, regardless of their individual circumstances.
  • Equity involves recognizing individual differences and providing resources or opportunities based on specific needs to achieve fair outcomes.

As soon as you move the goalposts to “achieve fair outcomes” you are no long acting with equality. If I work 20 hours a week and my boss works 50 hours a week, should we both be paid the same amount to insure a “fair outcome”? But if I have children at home and can only work 20 hours a week, under equity, shouldn’t that be considered in providing a “fair outcome”? Should I have the same opportunity for promotion as the person who works 40 hours a week? So where am I going with this?

On Thursday, The Daily Signal posted an article about a new policy by te Education Department regarding school discipline.

The article reports:

The Department of Education is rescinding several regulations that justified racial quotas in school discipline, the Daily Signal can first report.

Disparate impact is an approach to civil rights enforcement that claims a neutral policy that does not discriminate on its face can still constitute illegal racial discrimination if it has a “disproportionate” statistical effect on different racial and ethnic groups. 

“We should be making decisions based on meritocracy,” Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey told the Daily Signal in an interview. “We should be making decisions based on qualifications. This is just one additional important step, where we are demonstrating that any inclusion of race in any decision that is made within a school has to stop.”

The Obama administration used disparate-impact policy to require schools to make race a factor when considering disciplinary actions. Under Democrat administrations, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights found schools guilty of violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on race-neutral policies if data showed the school disciplined more minority students.

Thursday’s deregulatory action aims to ensure equal education opportunities and treatment for students, according to the Education Department. The move is in line with President Donald Trump’s executive order last April titled “Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy,” which made it the policy of the United States to eliminate all uses of disparate-impact liability.

Quotas are racist, regardless of how they are supposed to be beneficial.

The Need For Responsibility

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During the Biden administration, we heard a lot about the ‘proper’ handling of classified material. Mar-a-Lago was raided, President Biden’s garage was not. President Trump was charged; the case against President Biden was not charged because he was an old man with a faulty memory. Justice was not blind. However, both incidents brought up the issue of responsibility. In every business there is one person (or group of people) who represent the final authority. That person or group is held responsible for policies withing the business. In America, that person is the President; rightly or wrongly, he is held responsible for inflation, the stock market, energy prices, and a lot of other things he has no control over. But there are some things he does have control over.

On Wednesday, Just the News reported the following:

Briefing materials for President Barack Obama, subjects and times for White House Situation Room meetings and discussions about sensitive conversations with foreign leaders and even fallout from leaked National Security Agency intercepts were forwarded to Joe Biden’s private pseudonymous email accounts when he was vice president, according to a new tranche of documents turned over to Just the News by the National Archives. 

Security experts and lawmakers, who reviewed the records, said they were disturbed by the nonchalant transmission of sensitive government information to Biden’s insecure private email accounts and believed it put national security at risk.

“The new set of emails from Joe Biden’s time as Vice President are very troubling and are more evidence that Biden believed he did not have to abide by classification and document handling regulations,” former CIA analyst and former Trump National Security Council chief of staff Fred Fleitz told Just the News. 

Several hundred pages of emails from 2011 to 2015 were released to Just the News and its public interest law firm partner the Southeastern Legal Foundation as part on an ongoing Freedom of Information Act litigation.

The article notes:

Applicable federal regulations aren’t limited to classified material, and instead strictly limit federal employees’ use of commercial email to conduct government business.

As for the contents, each federal agency has its own definition of “sensitive.” The U.S. Air Force, for example calls it “controlled unclassified information” in a memo about email, while the U.S. Department of Labor is even more restrictive, directing federal employees to “NOT use your personal email or social media accounts for official matters. This raises record-keeping issues and potentially puts confidential information at risk.”

Why were both the Secretary of State (Hillary Clinton) and the Vice-President using fake names and private emails to do government business? That is the question I would like answered.

The Consequences Of The Biden Administration’s Middle East Policy

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The Biden administration’s Middle East policy is simply a continuation of the Obama administration’s Middle East policy–strengthen Iran and weaken Israel. President Obama may or may not have been an anti-Semite–I am not going there right now. The idea was that a strong Iran would add stability to the Middle East. It was a really dumb idea because Iran wants to control the Middle East, not make peace. The policy of both administrations has been a disaster and has resulted in increased terrorism and loss of life in both Israel and its enemies.

On Thursday, Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at American Greatness about the situation in the Middle East.

The article notes:

Both the Harris-Walz presidential ticket and now lame-duck President Joe Biden keep insisting that they are Israel’s best friend.

A snarly Biden recently bragged at a contentious press conference, “No administration has helped Israel more than I have. None, none, none. And I think [Netanyahu] should remember that.”

Yet the thin-skinned and triggered Biden’s prickliness poorly hid—or perhaps revealed—the truth: this current administration knows that it is responsible for the current explosion of the Middle East and the particular dilemmas of Israel.

Biden further revealed his blame-gaming of the Israeli government when asked another loaded question about purported Netanyahu election interference, saying, “Whether he’s trying to influence the election, I don’t know.”

Election interference?

Biden apparently forgot who just flew Ukrainian President Zelensky into swing state Pennsylvania, just as early and mail-in voting there began, to lobby for more aid even as he trashed candidates Trump and Vance to a left-wing magazine.

Recently, Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris refused to say whether the Netanyahu administration is even an ally of the United States.

The Biden administration (and candidate Kamala Harris) are trying to have it both ways–they want to seem to support Israel, but they don’t want to alienate the Muslim voting bloc.

The article concludes:

After it all, Biden-Harris lifted sanctions on a hostile Iran, giving it $100 billion in oil windfalls. It begged Iran to reenter the disastrous Iran deal. It abandoned the Abraham Accords. It lifted the terrorist designation from the terrorist Houthis. It restored fungible aid to the Hamas tunnel builders. It gave new aid to Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon.

Israel’s enemies got the Biden message: attack the Jewish state and perhaps Americans for the first time in a half-century may not really mind that much.

And so they did in unison.

Rather than admitting their own role in igniting the Middle East, Biden and Harris now blame the victims of their own incendiary foreign policy.

The final irony?

Israel has concluded that Biden-Harris foolhardiness can be toxic—and endanger its very survival—and so will not agree to its own suicide.

Instead, Israel seeks to finish a multifaceted war it did not seek. And one of whose beneficiaries from Israeli blood and treasure will be the U.S. itself, given Israel is now systematically weakening America’s own existential enemies.

Israel is right to remove the terrorist threat that will not always be aimed only at Israel—it will eventually come our way.

This Isn’t Really Surprising

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Israel is taking a long time to defeat Hamas. Part of that is due to their extreme concern to avoid civilian casualties–to the point of telling Hamas ahead of time where they will attack. Another part of the problem is America slow-walking our promised military equipment and the fact that the corruption in the Middle East is such that supporting terrorism can be lucrative. There is also the fact that Hamas knows that the longer the war goes on, the better their chances of winning the public relations war. And there are also numerous tunnel complexes that make fighting very difficult.

On Sunday, Breitbart reported:

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced Sunday that soldiers had uncovered a massive smuggling tunnel underneath the border between Gaza and Egypt in the area of Rafah — where the U.S. had cautioned Israel not to go.

How many countries are quietly undermining the Israeli war effort? We know that the Biden administration shares the goal of the Obama administration to increase the role of Iran in the Middle East and lessen the role of Israel.

The article concludes:

Prior to May, the Biden administration had warned Israel not to enter Rafah, even withholding weapons to pressure Israel to stay out of the area. Israel decided to enter Rafah anyway due to its strategic importance to the war against Hamas.

IDF control of the Philadelphi Corridor, which is a road along the border, has been at stake in recent negotiations with Hamas over a hostage-ceasefire deal. Hamas and the U.S. want Israel to cede control of the corridor, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been reluctant to give it up.

Control of the corridor allows the IDF to choke Hamas’s weapons supply; Israel does not trust Egyptian or U.S. guarantees to monitor the border effectively.

Israel is smart not to trust Egypt or the U.S.

 

Did They Wake The Sleeping Giant?

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On Friday, The Daily Signal posted an article about the impact and possible consequences of the Democrat’s lawfare against President Trump and his supporters.

The article notes:

It is perhaps hackneyed to observe that, in convicting and seeking to incarcerate a former president and current leading presidential candidate, we have “crossed the Rubicon.” Well …

Did we not cross a Rubicon when the demonic Obama administration sued the nuns—yes, literal nuns—of the Little Sisters of the Poor to try to force them to subsidize abortifacients?

Did we not cross a Rubicon when Democrats threw out 4,000 to 5,000 years of “innocent until proven guilty” civilizational norms to try to derail the U.S. Supreme Court confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh?

Did we not cross a Rubicon when then-vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris solicited funds to bail out anarchic Antifa-Black Lives Matter street hooligans?

Did we not cross a Rubicon when the American Stasi—sorry, the FBI—raided Mar-a-Lago over a document dispute?

Did we not cross a Rubicon when myriad Trump attorneys, including the renowned scholar John Eastman, were prosecuted for practicing the legal profession?

Did we not cross a Rubicon when Peter Navarro or Steve Bannon (just now) were ordered to jail?

The article notes that the Democrats have laid the groundwork for a new era in politics:

Ruinous or not, however, their precedent has now been set. And that raises the obvious question: For Democrats, will all of this, and especially their multifront anti-Trump lawfare, prove to be worth it?

That obvious question, in turn, has an equally obvious answer: absolutely, positively not.

The article notes three things that their lawfare has brought the Democrats–first, they did not get the expected bump in the polls after the verdict in the Trump trial. Second, the trial seriously eroded the faith of Americans in the justice system. And third, the continued lawfare woke up the sleeping political right.

The article concludes:

My friend John Yoo, the Bush-era Justice Department official and law professor normally a bit less pugnacious than yours truly, opined: “Repairing this breach of constitutional norms will require Republicans to follow the age-old maxim: Do unto others as they have done unto you.”

Megyn Kelly, the influential broadcaster who has had a complex relationship with Trump going back to the 2016 GOP presidential primary, said after the verdict: “I’m going to utter words I never thought I would utter in my life: We need Steve Bannon.” The famously combative Bannon appears headed for an unjust four-month prison sentence in a few weeks, but her point stands.

Democrats have no idea what they have unleashed. Perhaps worse, they don’t even care.

Stay tuned.

 

Clean Up Your Own Back Yard

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The Biden administration is doing some serious meddling in both the internal and external affairs of Israel. Internally they are trying to bring down the Netanyahu administration, externally they are trying to give Hamas a victory in Gaza. Both of these things will create more instability in the Middle East.

To understand the reason behind the Biden administration’s horrible foreign policy, we need to go back to the Obama administration. The Obama administration, for whatever reason, sought to stabilize the Middle East by strengthening Iran and weakening Israel. The foreign policy personnel of the Obama administration are the people dictating the foreign policy of the Biden administration.

On Monday, Legal Insurrection posted an article about the  Biden administration’s latest Middle East peace proposal. The goal of the Biden administration is to pressure Prime Minister Netanyahu into agreeing to this proposal. The proposal would be a death warrant for Israel.

The article reports:

I smelled a rat as soon as Biden announced it: “This has all the appearances of Team Biden trying to box Israel into something it did not propose and does not agree to – and dropping it just before the Sabbath so we can’t get a full Israeli response for 24 hrs as Biden continues to build pressure.”

We previously posted about Biden’s publicized statement on Friday, May 31, as Israel was entering a quiet period for the Sabbath, that purported to present a new Israeli ceasefire proposal, Biden Presented Supposed Israeli Ceasefire Proposal Leaving Hamas In Power, But It Was His Own.

The timing was suspicious, as was the substance. Per Biden, Israel had proposed what amounted to a permanent ceasefire not even subject to all hostages (alive and dead) being returned and subject to indefinite negotiations.

The article includes a screenshot of a tweet:

The article notes:

But Israel stopped short of saying Biden lied. In remarks over the weekend, Netanyahu came pretty close to using the “L” word, as Times of Israel reports:

Israeli officials pushed back on Monday on elements of the hostage deal proposal presented by US President Joe Biden over the weekend as an Israeli offer, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted that there were gaps between that proposal and Israel’s stance.

“The claim that we agreed to a ceasefire without our conditions being met is incorrect,” the prime minister reportedly told lawmakers.

Netanyahu said in a Knesset meeting that Israel will not end the war in Gaza until it achieves its three war aims, an Israeli official told The Times of Israel: destroying Hamas’s military and civil governance capabilities, securing the release of all hostages, and ensuring that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel.

“The proposal that Biden presented is incomplete,” the premier told MKs at a closed-door meeting of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, according to media reports.

He also reportedly said that there are “gaps” between the Israeli version and Biden’s recounting of it.

If we want peace in the Middle East, we are going to have to deal with Iran. That is the head of the snake. The other countries involved in funding terrorism might reconsider if bad things happen to Iran.

When Documents Are Unsealed…

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On Tuesday, The Epoch Times posted an article about some recent unsealed documents regarding government surveillance President Trump.

The article reports:

A federal judge overseeing former President Donald Trump’s classified documents case unsealed a new trove of documents on Monday, revealing the FBI’s code name for the investigation and how the FBI spoke about performing “loose surveillance” on the former president’s aircraft before an unprecedented raid in 2022.

The name, “Plasmic Echo,” was revealed in unredacted court filings that were made public by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon. A February 2022 case file that was attached was marked with, “[Redacted] PLASMIC ECHO; Mishandling of Classified or National Defense Information.” Notably, the FBI has used unusual names for prior investigations such as Crossfire Hurricane, Varsity Blues, Tin Panda, and Lemon-Aid.

Among the documents the judge released Monday also included an FBI claim from June 2022 in which a counterintelligence official, whose name was not included, talked about carrying out “loose surveillance” on President Trump’s plane to see if “boxes were loaded onto the plane.”

The article notes:

“Prior to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) team’s entry onto the MAL premises, FBI leadership informed and coordinated with local United States Secret service (USSS) leadership. Local USSS facilitated entry onto the premises, provided escort and access to various locations within, and posted USSS personnel in locations where the FBI team conducted searches,” the file said.

In the newly unsealed filing, it noted that four agents from the FBI Washington field office, 25 agents from the FBI Miami office, one FBI official from the agency’s headquarters, one Department of Justice (DOJ) counterintelligence and export control lawyer, and one official from the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of Florida were involved.

For what it’s worth, I am convinced that the documents that the Biden administration (yes, the Biden-Obama administration is behind this) wants to get its hands on are the documents relating to the Russia Hoax and the spying on the Trump campaign, the Trump transition team, and possibly the Trump presidency. President Trump declassified those documents while in office, and there are a lot of people who have a vested interest in making sure that the American public never sees them.

Your Tax Dollars At Work

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On Thursday, The Daily Wire posted an article about the amount of taxpayer money that goes to federal employees that actually work for the unions that represent federal employees rather than the government but are paid by the federal government.

The article reports:

The federal government pays more than $100 million a year to employees who aren’t doing their actual government jobs, but rather working for unions representing government employees against management — with taxpayers essentially funding both sides of the bargaining table. 

For decades, the government has tracked and reported those figures, but the Biden administration has removed the reports.

Under the policy known as “official time,” hundreds of nominal government employees haven’t done anything but full-time union work in years, yet remain on the federal payroll. Not only is the policy expensive to taxpayers, but it also props up the power of unions by subsidizing their activities, giving them resources even if employees don’t support them enough to pay dues. Those unions fight against the firing of employees accused of misconduct, and advocate for policies that sometimes pit the interests of employees over the interests of taxpayers, such as resisting a return to in-person work.

The Office of Personnel Management has historically kept track of and published how the program is being used, including during the Obama administration. But the data has not been updated since 2019 — when the government shelled out for 2.6 million hours, or nearly 300 years’ worth, of employee time that was actually spent on union business.

The Biden administration has even been secretive about its secrecy. In December, The Daily Wire asked OPM why the page listing the reports was missing, along with all historical reports except 2019, which can only be located via the search function. A spokesperson said, “Previous reports on official time are not currently available because OPM is reorganizing our website to improve navigation and customer experience.”

The article concludes:

In 2014, the Washington Examiner found more than 500 employees who did no or almost no work for their actual government jobs, despite drawing a full-time salary from taxpayers, because of official time. That includes 271 employees on full-time union release with the Department of Veterans Affairs, and 201 from the IRS.

Then-Sen. Tom Coburn said “I just don’t think the federal taxpayers ought to be paying for that… That’s what union dues are for. What’s irksome to me is that we are paying someone to be a pharmacist or a nurse, but they’re not doing that. They’re doing union work.”

Washington is due for a really good cleaning out!

“Get Off My Lawn,” He Shouted

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Last night I watched the State of the Union Address. I watched the entire speech and the rebuttal. I learned that to our ‘representatives’ and the elites in Washington, the most most important issues are Ukraine and January 6th. In the rebuttal, I learned that the four things important to Republicans are our southern borde5r, conflicts overseas, inflation, and crime–not necessarily in that order. When the State of the Union Address was over, I felt like someone had yelled at me for an hour and a half. The speech proved that President Biden does have the energy to give an hour and a half speech. It also left many Americans wondering if there were drugs involved.

In his speech, the President needed to allay doubts about his cognitive abilities. He also needed a reset from his image as a tired old man. He did a reasonable job on both counts as long as you ignored the yelling and the slurred speech near the end of the address.

There were a number of lies told during the speech. January 6th was not an insurrection–there were no guns involved and no one has been convicted of insurrection. The President did not inherit a struggling economy–he inherited low inflation, low interest rates, energy independence, and an economy on the rebound from the Covid lockdowns. A large number of the jobs he claims to have created were simply people returning to the jobs they held before the Covid lockdowns. I would also like to note that many of the jobs currently being created are part-time jobs. During the past two months, the number of full-time jobs has significantly decreased. The President also claimed that crime is down under his administration. That is simply not true, although much of the increase in crime is due to Democrat-run cities who have eliminated bail and are not keeping criminals in jail. In New York, the National Guard has been called up to patrol the New York City subways because crime has become a serious problem there.

Also, why was there a fence around the Capitol, but not a wall at our southern border? Do fences and walls work or do they not work? There was also a comment about increasing taxes on corporation and on the wealthy. Corporations do not pay taxes–they pass them on to their customers, fueling inflation. “Taxing the rich” is a proposal that simply feeds class envy. If you want to see the results, look at the Laffer Curve. I would also like to note that during the Obama administration, General Electric paid no income taxes. Why weren’t they sharing the burden?

The speech was loud, inaccurate, and divisive. The tone was not attractive. I do wonder if this speech, which seemed more like a campaign speech than a State of the Union Address, actually won over any undecided voters.

More Skullduggery Uncovered

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Yesterday I posted an article espousing the theory that the raid on Mar-a-Lago was really about the FBI wanting to recover information that incriminated the Obama administration for spying on the Trump campaign. There was another article posted at Substack yesterday that gave further credence to that theory.

The Substack article reported:

Last December 15th, as Americans decorated trees, lit Menorahs, and prepared to tune out for winter holidays, CNN ran an extraordinary article titled, “The mystery of the missing binder: How a collection of raw Russian intelligence disappeared under Trump.”

Co-authored by Natasha Bertrand, the gargantuan exposé claimed a mysterious “binder” of “highly classified information related to Russian election interference” went “missing” in the chaotic waning days of Donald Trump’s presidency in January 2021, raising concerns that some of America’s most “closely guarded national security secrets… could be exposed.”

CNN and its intelligence sources meant “exposure” in a bad way. Sources have told Public and Racket, however, that the secrets officials worry might be “exposed” are ones that would implicate them in widespread abuses of intelligence authority dating back to the 2015-2016 election season.

“I would call [the binder] Trump’s insurance policy,” said someone knowledgeable about the case. “He was very concerned about having it and taking it with him because it was the road map” of Russiagate.

Transgressions range from Justice Department surveillance of domestic political targets without probable cause to the improper unmasking of a pre-election conversation between a Trump official and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to WMD-style manipulation of intelligence for public reports on alleged Russian “influence activities.”

The CNN report claimed intelligence officials were concerned about the disclosure of “sources and methods that informed the U.S. government’s assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to help Trump win the 2016 election.”

They should be concerned. The story of how a team “hand-picked” by CIA Director John Brennan relied on “cooked intelligence” to craft that January 6th, 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment is the subject of tomorrow’s story, the last in this three-part series.

Corruption, not tradecraft, is what officials are desperate to keep secret.

I rather doubt the mainstream media will cover this unless they absolutely have to. Meanwhile, please follow the link to read the entire article. It really isn’t surprising, but it is alarming that a group of people inside our government felt entitled to determine the results of an election regardless of the will of the voters.

What Was Actually In Those Documents?

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Putting aside the fact that a Senator or Vice-President shouldn’t have classified documents in his home or garage, let’s take a look at what some of those documents were and how they might be related to other issues.

On Friday, The Epoch Times reported:

President Joe Biden retained documents related to Ukraine that were classified as “secret” and “confidential,” according to a report by Justice Department’s special counsel Robert Hur, released on Feb. 8.

The 388-page report states that the FBI found a folder labeled “VP Personal,” containing two documents—a telephone call sheet and talking points for a call with then-Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, which occurred on Dec. 11, 2015—marked as “secret.”

There is a handwritten note from President Biden in the upper-right corner of the sheet asking his executive assistant to “get [a] copy of this conversation from Sit Rm for my Records please.” The document was labeled “confidential” and “EYES ONLY DO NOT COPY.”

Additionally, one appendix in the report states that President Biden kept a memo with the subject line “U.S. Energy Assistance to Ukraine,” from September 2014. The results of the classification review indicate the memo was “confidential.”

President Biden served as vice president under the Obama administration at the time. His son, Hunter Biden, joined the board of directors of Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings in May 2014.

Nothing like breaking the law to help and unqualified family member in his job.

The article concludes, reminding us:

Burisma contacted the source to seek assistance in buying a U.S. company to merge with, in the hope that it could go public in the United States.

After the disclosure of an investigation into Burisma by Ukraine’s prosecutor general Viktor Shokin in 2016, the source informed Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma, that it could negatively affect the company’s prospective initial public offering.

Mr. Zlochevsky replied that Mr. Hunter Biden “will take care of all of those issues through his dad,” according to the document. Mr. Shokin resigned in March 2016.
President Biden in 2018 bragged at the Council of Foreign Relations that he got Mr. Shokin dismissed.

“‘We’re leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor’s not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” he said about his interaction with Ukrainian officials, referring to a $1 billion loan guarantee he threatened to withhold. “Well, son of a [expletive]. He got fired.”

Mr. Shokin has said that the threat was cited when he was ousted. He said in a sworn statement that then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko asked him to resign because of “pressure from the U.S. presidential administration, in particular from Joe Biden.”

But as of now, there will be no consequences for President Biden ignoring the laws he should have been enforcing.

The Third Term Of Barack Obama

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President Obama was not a friend of Israel. He was not a friend of peace in the Middle East. The Arab Spring, which he supported as a move to democracy in the Middle East, was simply an attempt to expand Muslim tyranny in the area. When Benjamin Netanyahu visited the White House during the Obama administration, he was treated very badly–even forced to leave through the back door. The Biden administration has been slightly more polite, and they say what they think they need to say, but their bottom line is the same.

On October 25th, The Federalist reported the following:

Secretary of State Antony Blinken contends that Hamas would gain no “greater” victory “than allowing its brutality to send us down a path of terrorism and nihilism. We must not let it.”

You can hear echoes of Barack Obama’s insufferable moral equivalencies imbued in that statement.

The contention is a not-so-subtle warning to Israel, who will almost surely enter Gaza and try to dismantle the Hamas terror state — which has been indirectly and directly funded not only by Iran, the European Union, and the United Nations but also by the Obama and Biden administrations.

The insinuation, of course, is that Israel needs to temper its inclination to engage in “terrorism and nihilism.” It is a blood libel.

It is not “terrorism” to seek justice for the pregnant woman who had her baby cut from her body or the elderly couple who was burned alive. And eliminating those who committed Nazi-like atrocities against your citizens is no more nihilistic than tracking down Eichmann or demanding Emperor Hirohito unconditionally surrender.

The article concludes:

The Biden administration is teeming with Obama-era Iran and Muslim Brotherhood fans. Not only did someone like Rob Malley — rehired by Biden after leading Obama’s giveaway — surround himself with real-life Iranian assets, but he’d met at least twice with Hamas, once with Obama’s blessing.

“This administration is different from the previous administration,” Hamas’s deputy foreign minister and New York Times columnist, Ahmed Yussuf, said at the time. “We believe Hamas’s message is reaching its destination.”

…Like Obama, Biden offers just enough lip service about Israel’s right to defend itself to placate Jewish donors and voters. Every action of the president – even his supposed morale-lifting trip to the country–is meant to inhibit Israel from winning. Democrats are open to helping Israel defend itself but unopened to the prospect of destroying those who seek its end.

Let me amend that. There are plenty of Democrats who want Israel destroyed and more every day.

When Obama finally deigned to wade in on the killing of Jews and Americans, he offered his usual perfunctory throat-clearing about Israel’s right to exist before hitting the “but.” The “but” can be summed up as so: the more Jews die, the more Jews have a responsibility to placate the Islamic world and give their enemies a state.

And apparently, in many ways, the Biden administration concurs. 

At some point the Democrats will realize that terrorism is never contained. Terrorism against Israel will eventually morph into terrorism against America (again).

Tone Deaf?

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On Tuesday, The Daily Caller reported that Jack Lew is President Biden’s choice for Ambassador to Israel.

The article reports:

President Joe Biden’s nominee to be Ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, oversaw the infamous “pallets of cash” transfer of funds to Iran while serving as former President Barack Obama’s Treasury Secretary in 2016.

The Obama administration paid Iran nearly $2 billion in January of 2016 to resolve a dispute dating back to the 1970’s, in which the U.S.-backed Shah government in Iran purchased $400 million of military equipment from Washington. The equipment was never delivered due to the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and Obama paid back the $400 million to Tehran plus $1.3 billion in interest.

As Treasury Secretary, Lew oversaw the transfer of the initial $400 million payment on Jan. 17, 2016, which was delivered in the now-infamous form of foreign cash carried on a number of pallets by aircraft. The “pallets of cash” incident became a frequent line of critique for those who opposed Obama’s policy toward Iran, which involved lifting sanctions and negotiating a diplomatic agreement aimed at curbing the development of Tehran’s nuclear program.

The money for Iran came from a Treasury Department fund known as the “Judgement Fund,” which is money set aside by Congress to settle litigation disputes.

I suppose he was just following orders, but I have heard that excuse before.

The article notes:

A 2018 Senate report found Lew falsely claimed Iran had no access to the U.S financial system during his time as Treasury Secretary. In fact, Lew “granted a specific license that authorized a conversion of Iranian assets worth billions of U.S. dollars using the U.S. financial system,” according to the report from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Lew was also responsible for implementing sanctions relief for Iran as part of the JCPOA, colloquially known as Obama’s Iran nuclear deal. The JCPOA required that Washington lift various sanctions on Tehran in exchange for the Islamic Republic ceasing its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

If you choose to make this man an ambassador, Israel is not the place to send him.

 

A Warning

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On Monday, Victor Davis Hanson posted an article at American Greatness about what has happened to America in recent years.

The article notes:

We are in the midst of one of the most radical revolutions in American history. It is as far-reaching and dangerous as the turbulent years of the 1850s and 1860s or the 1930s. Every aspect of American life and culture is under assault, including the very processes by which we govern ourselves, and the manner in which we live.

The Revolution began under the Obama administration that sought to divide Americans into oppressed and oppressors, and then substitute race for class victimization. It was empowered by the bicoastal wealth accrued from globalization, and honed during the COVID lockdown, quarantine-fed economic downturn, and the George Floyd riots and their aftermath. The Revolution was boosted by fanatic opposition to the presidency of Donald Trump. And the result is an America that is unrecognizable from what it was a mere decade ago.

Here are 10 upheavals that the Left has successfully wrought.

1. Free expression

2. The Weaponization of Justice

3. The Attack on the Supreme Court

4. The Media-Democratic Fusion

5. The Destruction of Common Law

6. The Erosion of the Military

7. Sexes

8. Race, Not Class

9. Debt is a Construct

10. Universities

The article concludes:

None of the above was true at the millennium; all are now—with more still to come.

Please follow the link above to read the details. The fact that we have come so far in such a short time is frightening.

This Should Be Called Treason

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On Friday, Gregg Jarrett reported that during the Trump administration as President Trump was attempting to negotiate with Iran, former officials of the Obama administration “engaged in a secret meeting with Iran.”

The article reports:

A group of senior Obama administration officials met with Iran in 2018 as “part of an effort to undermine the Trump administration’s diplomatic push to isolate the hardline regime, according to an internal State Department document” reports The Washington Free Beacon.

“The document is the firmest proof to date that Obama-era officials were engaged in back-channel efforts to keep negotiations with Iran alive” writes The Beacon. The memo states then-President Trump and his administration were working to increase economic pressure on Iran in 2018, but the delegation of U.S. former ambassadors held a secret, “off-the-record” meeting with former Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif at his residence in New York City.

The seven-page memo was assembled during the meeting with Zarif, during which Zarif claimed that Trump’s policies have fomented anti-U.S. fervor in Iran and pointed to the popularity of Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) leader Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated by Trump two years later in a drone strike.

“I was as popular as Soleimani, but now I am at 47 percent and his is up,” Zarif said, according to the memo. “He is closer to 80 percent. People of Iran once preferred engagement, now opted for resistance as the only reality. That is what the polls are telling us now and it is the reality of the region.”

The article quotes The Washington Free Beacon:

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was not aware of these meetings while leading the State Department, said the memo corroborates reports from the time about Kerry’s efforts to salvage the 2015 nuclear deal through back-channel powwows with Iranian officials.

“This memo reflects even more than we already knew about former State Department officials continuing on as if they were still in office,” said Pompeo, who is now senior counsel for global affairs at the ACLJ. “Trying, at every turn, to work with the foreign minister for a terrorist regime, Iran, to undermine the very sanctions put in place by America. It’s worse than not knowing when to get off stage. Actively seeking to protect the terrible deal they struck, these former officials—two years after Obama left office—were signaling that Iran should stand firm against America.”

Everyone involved should be tried for treason.

While We Were All Watching Ukraine…

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On Friday, The New York Post posted the following headline:

Biden on verge of making worst deal ever with Iran

The article reminds us of some recent history regarding Iran and nuclear weapons:

The Obama White House claimed the Iran deal guaranteed the most intrusive inspections the world had ever known, but only Israel’s Mossad found the evidence Iran was cheating — a secret nuclear weapons archive that the mullahs kept hidden before, during and after negotiating the Iran deal. That archive led inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, to at least four previously unknown sites inside Iran. At three of them, the inspectors found traces of uranium.

…Russia has been a leading opponent of the IAEA’s probe in Iran for years. Since Moscow regularly breaks its own international treaty obligations — whether in the use of chemical weapons or the war crimes we see today in Ukraine — Russian diplomats work overtime to shield rogue nations like Iran and Syria from accountability.

The new deal takes Moscow’s side — flouting the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, lifting sanctions and legitimizing Iran’s nuclear program without first demanding a full accounting of previous and current violations. Put simply, it is an agreement knowingly built on deceit that will encourage other authoritarian regimes to violate their international commitments.

Another important change since 2015: We know so much more about the ways in which key Iranian banks and companies finance terrorism. The Obama administration told Congress that nothing in the Iran deal precluded America from imposing terrorism sanctions on Iran. Congress, on a bipartisan basis, took that promise to heart and directed the Trump administration to impose sanctions on affiliates of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Today, the Central Bank of Iran, the National Iranian Oil Company and hundreds more entities are subject to US terrorism sanctions — not nuclear sanctions — due to indisputable evidence showing their involvement in financing terrorism. To lift sanctions on these banks and firms without any indication of behavioral change will be unprecedented. The deal will directly subsidize the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations — a win for another Russian client state, Syria, as well.

Hopefully this treaty will never get past the Senate, but that doesn’t mean the Biden administration won’t abide by it anyway. We currently have a lawless administration and an impossibility of impeachment due to a Democrat congress and a downright scary line of succcession–Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Grassley, Antony J. Blinken, etc.

Pray for the mid-terms and hope they won’t be too late.

The Soft Coup That Is Taking Place In Front Of Us

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A friend who is much smarter than I posted this on Facebook today:

It’s easy to ignore major parts of a huge government like ours because we never deal with certain sections. Of course we deal indirectly with the food and drug administration every time we eat some food but we don’t really pay them any attention.

I bet 98% of Americans have no idea what position Jelena McWilliams holds, yet her FDIC controls everything that happens at your bank. Through regulations passed to improve our “faith” in our banking institutions, the FDIC affects everything from how much money you earn on your savings account to whether or not you can get a mortgage on your house. If somebody was going to take over our government, it would be a good place to begin.

Last month Ms. McWilliams, chairman of the FDIC, warned us of just that. She said the Democrats on the FDIC’s committee have been going behind her back to get agency employees to circumvent the chain of command to use their position to further their own agenda. One of the ways they do this is to threaten banks that make loans to conservative businesses. During the Obama reign of terror they made it next to impossible for gun dealers, including independent sporting goods stores, to use federal banks.
Ms. McWilliams wrote an Op-Ed about the problem and encouraged the Puppet President (who is constitutionally mandated to take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed) to get involved.

After the White House refused to stop targeting conservatives, she tendered her resignation Friday. We now have one less patriot fighting against corruption and the takeover of our government by a select few who think they know what is best for us.

That is why the Democrats are not concerned about this year’s election. They plan to have complete control of our country by that time. If they get their “voting rights act“ passed, we will not have another fair election until after the civil war.

You may disagree with his conclusion, but his facts are correct. After reading his post, I went looking for more information. I found it.

Fox News covered Ms. McWilliams’ resignation yesterday, reporting:

FDIC Chairman Jelena McWilliams announced her resignation Friday in an open letter addressed to President Biden, just weeks after she warned of a “hostile takeover” of the agency by Democrats. 

McWilliams, a Serbian immigrant, has lived in the country for decades and boasts a successful career in law, finance, and banking policy.

“When I immigrated to this country 30 years ago, I did so with a firm belief in the American system of government,” McWilliams wrote in the letter. 

…She continued, “Throughout my tenure, the agency has focused on its fundamental mission to maintain and instill confidence in our banking system while at the same time promoting innovation, strengthening financial inclusion, improving transparency, and supporting community banks and minority depository institutions, including through the creation of the Mission Driven Bank Fund.”

McWilliams was appointed to the position in 2018 under former President Trump. Her resignation will be effective Feb. 4.

McWilliams did not provide a direct reason for her resignation in her letter to the president. However, she previously published a December op-ed in which she described a “hostile takeover” of the FDIC by Democrats.

The actual details of the events which led to her resignation are contained in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on December 15th.

Some highlights from the Wall Street Journal:

On Nov. 16, as I was about to board a flight to Switzerland for a meeting of international regulators, I informed board member Michael Hsu, acting comptroller of the currency, that the FDIC staff document would be available to board members no later than Dec. 6. Seventy-five minutes later, the directors sent a joint letter instructing FDIC staff to mark up their original document instead. Agency staff report to me as the CEO, and I have always ensured that board members have access to staff for discussions, briefings and technical expertise. The board members’ letter was an attempt to seize control of the FDIC’s staff while its chairman was on a nine-hour flight to Europe for official meetings.

…On Dec. 6, the FDIC staff produced a document to board members that was factual and neutral in tone, informed by the expertise of career staff—a genuine effort to solicit public feedback without politicizing the agency or the process. It asked broad-based questions on the statutory factors that govern merger applications and whether the FDIC’s existing approach is appropriate.

Within hours of receiving that document, board members responded by attempting to vote on the original CFPB document. Board member Martin Gruenberg, a former chairman, electronically signed his alleged vote on Dec. 3, three days before receiving the FDIC document for review. When board members were informed that their actions didn’t constitute a valid vote, Messrs. Chopra and Gruenberg posted their document on the CFPB’s website and claimed it was an official FDIC issuance.

Of the 20 chairmen who preceded me at the FDIC, nine faced a majority of the board members from the opposing party, including Mr. Gruenberg as chairman under President Trump until I replaced him as chairman in 2018. Never before has a majority of the board attempted to circumvent the chairman to pursue their own agenda.

So why is this important? Remember when banks (under the Obama administration) closed accounts of businesses dealing in gun sales? Remember (under the Obama administration) when any organization with a conservative-sounding name was denied tax exempt status? Remember when banks (under the Clinton administration) were forced to make sub-prime mortgage loans in the name of equality? The FDIC needs to be politically neutral. What is happening now is the Biden administration (aka deep state) attempting to silence conservative speech by taking control of the banking system. Be prepared to hear in the future that organizations like One America New and other conservative news outlets will not be able to get business loans to expand their businesses. That is where this is going.

This Book Is Worth Reading

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On October 1, The Center for Security Policy posted a brief book review of The Arab Spring Ruse: How the Muslim Brotherhood Duped Washington in Libya and Syria, by investigative journalist John Rossomando.

The book review includes the following:

The new book, The Arab Spring Ruse: How the Muslim Brotherhood Duped Washington in Libya and Syria, by investigative journalist John Rossomando and published by the Center for Security Policy offers a definitive account ̶ derived from interviews with Syrian and Libyan opposition figures and a top Obama administration official, Hillary Clinton’s emails, social media posts, Arabic-language news accounts, and never before reported documents ̶ of the foreign policy disaster in Syria and Libya that placed the U.S. government on the same side as al-Qaida-aligned jihadists. Those countries have never recovered from these policies that led to the rise of ISIS and still on-going civil wars.

Now-familiar names, such as Antony Blinken, William Burns, Samantha Power, Susan Rice, and Lloyd Austin, make appearances as Rossomando details how the Obama administration opened the door to Muslim Brotherhood propagandists secretly aligned themselves with pro al-Qaida jihadists in Syria and Libya.

“With the unfortunate collapse of Afghanistan, this book could not be timelier,” said Kyle Shideler, the Center’s Director of Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, “The Biden administration’s reliance on cooperation with the Taliban, falsely characterized as growing in moderation, is a mirror image of the failed Libya and Syria policies that John extensively documents.”

The Arab Spring Ruse details how liberal Arab opposition figures were snubbed in favor of the hardcore pro-jihadist figures, who allied with al-Qaida and ISIS, while being sold to Washington as “moderates.”

Emails to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from Sidney Blumenthal highlight how the Obama-Biden Administration knew about links between Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Libya and Egypt and al-Qaida figures during the so-called Arab Spring, but chose to support jihadist rebels anyway.

The book also details the role of U.S.-based Muslim Brotherhood-aligned leaders in influencing U.S. policy towards Syria and Libya. Operating out of a Northern Virginia mosque famous for being led by Al Qaida cleric Anwar Awlaki and hosting two of the 9/11 hijackers, Islamist leaders created lobby groups that targeted Libya and Syria and served as a conduit to deceptively pass jihadists off as moderate supporters of democracy and human rights.

The Biden administration is simply the third term of the Obama administration and includes and will amplify all of the failures of the Obama administration. We can expect to see massive government overreach and a loss of many of the freedoms we take for granted over the next three years.

A Cease-Fire Will Be Called If Israel Is Winning

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For a short time in 2020, it looked as if peace might break out in the Middle East. Instead, the ending of the policies that were moving in the direction of peace has brought us war. It is interesting to see the divide in America regarding this war. Yesterday John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line Blog about what is happening in America and in the Middle East.

The article reports:

The current round of violence that was initiated by Hamas firing thousands of rockets into Israel is depressing on a number of fronts, not least because we are once again hearing brain-dead shibboleths from the White House. After a four-year respite under President Trump, ignorance again reigns. Today Jen Psaki was pressed by White House reporters on why President Biden had not yet called for a cease fire. She bobbed and weaved, saying that “we all know” that the only way to end violence is “for there to be a two-state solution.”

Really? How do we all know that? The Arabs were offered a two-state solution in 1948, and they turned it down, preferring to try to destroy Israel and kill the Jews. They have made the same choice consistently over the last 73 years. And if Gaza were a “state,” why would Hamas be any less prone to launch missiles against Israel?

The article notes that President Biden has called for a cease-fire and asked Israel to make every effort to protect innocent civilians.

The article concludes:

This is the weird false equivalence that we see all the time where Israel is concerned. How about if the world’s “leaders” demand that Hamas “make every effort to ensure the protection of [Israel’s] innocent civilians”? But that wouldn’t make sense, since the whole point of Hamas’s terrorist offensive is to kill innocent civilians. The Palestinians have sown the wind, and yet the world’s prime concern is that they not reap the whirlwind. Why?

Similarly, world “leaders” tell Israelis that their response to Hamas’s thousands of rockets must be “proportionate,” which means, apparently, that no more Palestinians than Israelis should die. Evidently Israelis are supposed to downgrade their own competence to match Hamas’s primitive, if brutal, rocketry.

This is a standard never before known to warfare. If you are attacked by an enemy, it is appropriate to respond with overwhelming force so as to devastate your enemy and disable him from further attacks, not at the least cost to your enemy, but at the least cost to your own citizens. See, e.g., the U.S. response to Japanese and German aggression in World War II. Hamas started this war, and Israel has every right to inflict maximum damage until it is satisfied that Hamas can never again pose a threat.

Of course, for reasons I will never understand, that is not how things play out in the Middle East. I suppose Israel will stop too soon, under pressure from “world leaders” and public opinion, and leave Hamas more or less intact to fight again another day. This is, I think, the real reason why the “cycle of violence” that is such a cliche in the region persists.

The definition of insanity is ‘doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.’ That is exactly what the Biden administration is doing in resurrecting the failed Middle East policies of the Obama administration. Until Hamas stops lobbing rockets at Israeli civilians, there will not be peace. Until the world stops trading with Iran who is supplying the rockets, there will not be peace. Meanwhile, if Israel begins to win this war, the United Nations will demand a cease-fire. That’s how things work in the Middle East.

Remember The Taylor Force Act?

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In 2018, President Donald Trump signed the Taylor Force Act into law. The law prevents the United States from sending support to the Palestinian Authority (PA) as long as the PA continues to give subsidies to the families of terrorists or the families of those in prison in Israel for committing terrorism. Evidently the Biden administration has chosen to overlook that rule.

On Thursday, Breitbart reported the following:

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and seventeen other Republican Senators wrote to Secretary of State Tony Blinken on Thursday, objecting to the Biden administration’s plan to spend $250 million on the Palestinians, arguing that the proposal violates anti-terror law.

…In 2018, President Donald Trump signed the Taylor Force Act into law, which prevents the U.S. from providing economic support and other funding to the Palestinian Authority while it continues to pay the families of deceased terrorists, or to pay terrorists in Israeli prisons — a policy referred to by critics as “pay-for-slay.” The Palestinian leadership, having refused to end the payments, lost U.S. funding. Trump also cut funding to the UNRWA because of concerns that it has supported terror. The Taylor Force Act allows for a limited set of humanitarian exemptions, such as funding for vaccination programs.

Blinken claimed that “All assistance will be provided consistent with U.S. law,” but did not explain how the funding would comply with the Taylor Force Act. He also did not provide any evidence of reforms within the Palestinian Authority or UNRWA, nor did he mention any Palestinian effort to discourage terror or to stop incitement against Israel or Jews.

The article concludes:

The State Department’s announcement of funding to the Palestinians on Wednesday came after weeks of speculation that the Biden administration was spending the money in secret to avoid public scrutiny or potential legal challenges to the policy.

It is becoming very obvious that the Biden administration is President Obama’s third term. The Biden administration will continue the failed Middle East policies of the Obama administration. It is irrelevant whether or not President Obama is actually pulling the strings–the policies are the same.

Praise From An Unexpected Source

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Yesterday The New York Post posted an article about a recent statement by former Obama White House advisor Van Jones.

The article reports:

“Donald Trump — and I get beat up by liberals every time I say this, but I’m gonna keep saying it — he has done good stuff for the black community,” Jones said on CNN, where he is a frequent contributor. “Opportunity zone stuff, black college stuff. I worked with him on criminal justice stuff. I saw Donald Trump have African American people, formerly incarcerated, in the White House — embraced them, treated them well. There’s a side to Donald Trump that I think he does not get enough credit for.”

Jones said part of the reason Trump’s accomplishments didn’t break through were because of the “incendiary stuff” the president said. He also accused Trump of violating “the No. 1 rule of blackness, which is, ‘I don’t mess with people who mess with people I don’t mess with,’”

I totally don’t understand that last statement, but that might be because I am unfamiliar with the ‘rules of blackness.’

Van Jones is an interesting gentleman. In September 2009, a website called Political Pistachio posted the following:

In 2001, Jones was the leader and founder of a radical anti-American group, the communist revolutionary organization “Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement,” or STORM. This is the same group that Fox News Channel’s Glenn Beck showed America, via a section of STORM’s manual (called “Reclaiming Revolution” – what kind of revolution? Something in line with Cuba’s? Russia’s? China’s?), that describes Van Jones’ radical organization as having a “commitment to the fundamental ideas of Marxism-Leninism.”

Mr. Jones is entitled to hold any political view he chooses, but I do think it is interesting that after serving in the Obama administration, he is a frequent contributor to CNN. The statement that President Trump has done positive things for the black community has already resulted in requests to have him fired. So much for free speech.

 

We Are Truly In The Political Silly Season

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President Trump brokered a peace deal between Israel and the UAE. That is amazing. He was able to do that because Israel trusts him and because the UAE is aware of the danger Iran poses to the region. As expected, Joe Biden is taking credit for the peace deal.

Yesterday The Daily Wire posted an article about the peace deal.

The article reports:

On Thursday, following the announcement of the historic peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden made the astonishing claim that the Obama administration was partially responsible for preparing the way for the deal.

Biden said that “the coming together of Israel and Arab states builds on the efforts of multiple administrations to foster a broader Arab-Israeli opening, including the efforts of the Obama-Biden administration to build on the Arab Peace Initiative,” adding, “I personally spent time with leaders of both Israel and the UAE during our administration building the case for cooperation and broader engagement and the benefits it could deliver to both nations, and I am gratified by today’s announcement. It is a timely reminder that enmities and differences — even long standing ones — are not set in stone, and of the role American diplomacy can play,” as Fox News reported.

The article explains why the claim from Joe Biden is false:

The Arab Peace Initiative that Biden cited was proposed by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah at the 2002 Arab League Summit in Beirut, Lebanon, endorsed by that summit, and later endorsed at the 2007 summit in Riyadh. It called for full Israeli withdrawal from Golan Heights, which would leave Israel vulnerable to attacks from above it, withdrawal from the Biblical Judea and Samaria, where the ancient Jewish kings were crowned, and withdrawal from East Jerusalem, which includes the Temple Mount, the site of the Biblical temples, and for Jews, the holiest place on earth.

As it turned out, Israel never compromised on those issues, and yet the UAE has made peace, so Biden’s citation of the Arab Peace Initiative to buttress his claim that the Obama administration had anything to do with the deal is ludicrous.

The article notes the role the policies of the Obama administration played in this peace deal:

But in one sense, Biden is correct, albeit not for the reasons he cited. The Obama administration, by its support for the theocratic, despotic Iranian regime, the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world, triggered Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia to link with Israel as all four countries were aware of the Iranian threat to all of them.

The Obama-Biden administration was probably the most hostile to Israel in American history. The administration repeatedly treated Israel as an obstacle to peace in the Middle East while praising Iran, a knows sponsor of terrorism.

It is the political silly season. We can expect much more of this before the election in November.

When Protocol Is Ignored For Political Reasons

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Andrew McCarthy posted an article today at The National Review stating that during the 2016 presidential campaign, the Trump campaign was never given a briefing to warn them about the possibility of Russian interference in their campaign. There are a number of reasons why that is important.

The article reports:

My column over the weekend was about the Obama-Biden administration’s exploitation of the government’s intelligence and law-enforcement apparatus to investigate Donald Trump, who was then the opposition Republican Party’s presidential candidate. The essence of this investigation is palpable from an August 2016 incident: The FBI covertly surveilled Trump by capitalizing on the U.S. intelligence community’s practice of providing a counterintelligence and security briefing to the nominees of the two major political parties.

The exploitation of executive power to monitor the opposition party’s presidential candidate is a Watergate-level abuse of power. That is why Obama and FBI apologists have steadfastly refused to cop to it.

A major element of their story is that the faux briefing given to Trump was actually a defensive briefing. We are to believe its purpose was to warn Trump that his campaign could be infiltrated by covert agents working for Russia.

The significance of the “defensive briefing” canard, and the importance of refuting it, still seems lost on many of Trump’s Russiagate defenders.

Political spying is an impeachable offense. Democrats have countered with the ridiculous “defensive briefing” yarn because they understand this. As I demonstrate in Ball of Collusion, the decision not to give Trump a defensive briefing is ironclad proof that he was the target of the investigation, and therefore that the Obama-Biden administration was guilty of political spying.

That “defensive briefing” lie should now be put to rest, thanks to the recently declassified FBI report about the session. Yes, one big takeaway is that the FBI used the “briefing” as an investigative operation. But don’t miss the forest for the trees. Even on its own deceptive terms, the faux briefing was neither portrayed nor conducted by the FBI as defensive to warn the Trump campaign; it was a standard counterintelligence and security briefing for presidential candidates.

The article concludes:

Subsequently, the AG explicitly distinguished a “defensive briefing” from the August briefing Pientka gave to Trump: “I have been told . . . that a lesser kind of briefing, a security briefing that generally discusses, you know, general threats apparently was given to the campaign in August.” That is different, Barr explained, from a “defensive briefing . . . where you are told . . . you are a specific target” of a foreign intelligence service.

Donald Trump and his campaign were never given a defensive briefing to warn of Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 election. Clearly, that is because the Obama-Biden administration and the FBI baselessly theorized that Trump was the one conspiring with Russia. In the Russiagate narrative, as a candidate and then as the president, Trump was the perp, not the victim. They weren’t looking to warn him. They were looking to nail him — or, at least, to persuade the country that he just might be a Russian mole.

So where are we now? Because of irresponsible reporting by the American media, half of the country believes that President Trump is a Russian agent. Half of the country has no idea of the abuses of the intelligence community that went on during the Obama administration. Unfortunately it is likely that none of the people responsible for the abuse will be held accountable–holding them accountable would further divide an already divided country. Therefore, we can expect that the next time a Democrat is in the White House, this behavior will be repeated. There are some in power who are trying to prevent that from happening by holding the guilty parties accountable, but I doubt their chances of success. The principle that is responsible for where we are now is that in a representative republic, the people are responsible for the government they have. Until more people pay attention, we will have massive corruption in both liberal politics and the media. Hopefully more people will begin to pay attention before it is too late.

 

The Five Questions That Will Determine The Presidential Election In November

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The New York Sun posted an article yesterday by Conrad Black. The article lists the five things that will determine who wins the presidential election in November.

These are the five things listed in the article:

    • Can the President override the Democratic press’s thunderous campaign to terrorize the country over the coronavirus?

    • Can the president successfully connect Vice President Biden’s campaign to the hooligans, anti-white racists, and urban guerrillas who effectively are being encouraged by the corrupt Democratic mayors of many of the nation’s largest cities?

    • Will the economic recovery and the decline in the unemployment generated by the COVID-19 shutdown continue at its recent pace and strengthen the economy as a pro-Trump electoral argument?

    • Will the Republicans make adequately clear to the country the authoritarian and Marxist implications of the Biden-Sanders unity document?

    • Will special counsel John Durham indict senior members of the Obama Administration over their handling of the spurious allegation of collusion between Donald Trump and the Russian government in the 2016 election and Justice Department violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and how will Mr. Biden himself come through it?

The coronavirus has given us some insight into what unbridled government authority can do. Some of the regulations put in place by governors and mayors were based on common sense–things your mother told you when you were young like wash you hands, cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze, and don’t hang around with sick people. Other regulations were simply power grabs to prevent Americans from exercising their First Amendment rights–churches in Nevada restricted to a lower percentage of occupancy than casinos, protests to open businesses criticized and shut down while other protests (that included looting and riots) were allowed to continue. We have had a taste of out-of-control government in recent months. A vote for Joe Biden and whoever he chooses as his running mate will give us more of the same. Joe Biden has already stated that he wants to reassemble the Obama team–the group that gave us anemic economic growth, Benghazi where our ambassador was murdered followed by lying about it on television, ISIS, politicization of the Justice Department, and too many other scandals to mention.

The voters will choose. We need to pray for wisdom in voting and an honest election.

This Isn’t Politics–It’s Illegal Activity

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Yesterday Just the News posted an article about the information found in some recently declassified emails. The one thing we are learning from the recent release of newly declassified documents is that the documents were classified solely to protect those in the intelligence community who were breaking the law.

The article reports:

Donald Trump was president for only 24 hours when then-FBI supervisor Peter Strzok sent an angry missive to his boss. A colleague had given the new White House a counterintelligence briefing and hadn’t consulted on how to use the meeting to further the Russia collusion investigation.

“I heard from [redacted] about the WH CI briefing routed from [redacted],” Strzok wrote on Jan. 21, 2017, a day into the new Trump presidency after learning fellow agent Jennifer Boone had given the White House a briefing without his knowledge.

“I am angry that Jen did not at least cc: me, as my branch has pending investigative matters there,” Strzok added in his email to Assistant Director for Counterintelligence William Priestap. “This brief may play into our investigative strategy, and I would like the ability to have visibility and provide thoughts/counsel to you in advance of the briefing.

The article continues with the relevant timeline:

“When Strzok found out those briefings were already conducted without his knowledge, he got upset. Since the CI briefings apparently were no longer available as a subterfuge, soon thereafter Deputy Director McCabe reached out to Flynn directly to set up an interview appointment,” he added. “Director Comey admitted later they took advantage of the disorganization of a new administration to avoid the protocols that would normally be in place to control access to senior WH personnel like Flynn.”

The article concludes:

“Because Flynn was expected to attend the first such briefing for members of the Trump campaign on August 17, 2016, the FBI viewed that briefing as a possible opportunity to collect information potentially relevant to the Crossfire Hurricane and Flynn investigations,” Horowitz wrote. “We found no evidence that the FBI consulted with Department leadership or ODNI officials about this plan.”

Tom Fitton, the head of Judicial Watch, said the FBI’s conduct during the investigation reeked of politics.

“These documents suggest that President Trump was targeted by the Comey FBI as soon as he stepped foot in the Oval Office,” Fitton said.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It is becoming obvious that many of the people in the intelligence community during the Obama administration considered themselves above the law and had no problem violating the civil rights of American citizens. Those people belong in jail. Hopefully that will happen someday soon.