Everyone’s talking about the the Inspector General Report on the Hillary Clinton email probe, which I’ve not only not been able to read, I haven’t even properly skimmed the summaries yet. But I was already planning to do a Clinton Corruption Update next week, so I’ll try to grapple with it then.
50 Media Mistakes in the Trump Era. Just 50? Here’s a taste: “June 4, 2017: NBC News reported in a Tweet that Russian President Vladimir Putin told TV host Megan Kelly that he had compromising information about Trump. Actually, Putin said the opposite: that he did not have compromising information on Trump.”
Samantha Bee has never to my knowledge said anything that is funny. Her business is the sort of thing that would be of keen interest to those monkeys in the Duke study: the ritual raising and lowering of status — which, as Tyler Cowen and Arnold Kling and others have argued, is what politics is mostly about. The same holds true for media criticism, which is of course only another form of politics. Professor Cowen: “I have a simple hypothesis. No matter what the media tells you their job is, the feature of media that actually draws viewer interest is how media stories either raise or lower particular individuals in status. . . . The status ranking of individuals implied by a particular media source is never the same as yours, and often not even close. . . . Indeed that is why other people enjoy those media sources, because they take pleasure in your status, and the status of your allies, being lowered.”
Samantha Bee does not sell humor or satire: She sells status adjustment. She got her start on The Daily Show, which of course is nothing more than an extended, tedious, witless exercise in concentrated status-lowering: hence all that chest-pounding excitement every time Jon Stewart destroyed! somebody or another, which is precisely the sort of thing that gets the ol’ chimp juices flowing.
Calling Ivanka Trump a “feckless c***” on television is a win-win for Bee et al.: One possibility is that Ivanka Trump offers no response, in which case her status is lowered by her being obliged to endure outrageous insults by a relative nobody on TBS; the second possibility is that she responds, in which case her status is lowered by her being obliged to condescend to respond to the outrageous insults of a relative nobody on TBS. The proverb holds that the problem with wrestling a pig is that you both get dirty but only the pig enjoys it. Samantha Bee is that pig.
Since Trump’s election victory in 2016, the left has lost their goddamn minds. The left has become a national freakout movement and they think that his election legitimizes their complete childish and vulgar meltdown on the national stage. On their side, there is no one telling them that they’ve gone too far- they will simply ramp up the violence all the way to the fall. There’s no one to stop their post-election temper tantrum.
Let’s be honest, though. This didn’t happen overnight. The left has absolved itself from any cultural responsibility the moment they gave Bill Clinton a pass for raping people. And then used cultural outlets like The Daily Show to mock everyone who isn’t on their side and delegitimize civil discourse.
Come the mid-term elections, the more crass and racist stunts that they pull (and get away with), the more people are going to drift into the right-of-center Trump camp. The Democrats were already demographically in trouble with 2018, but the further they push the cultural envelope with mean and childish antics (let alone actual political violence) they are going to get a cultural backlash that makes 1968 look like child’s play.
And what really is bad news for the left is that they’re already at peak jerk levels. What the heck will they do for an encore leading up to November?
If you had been making predictions based on these different movies, Movie 1, predicted that President Trump would not be popular with Israel, and he wouldn’t take the bold step of moving the American embassy to Jerusalem. But both of those outcomes are compatible with Movie 2.
Movie 1 would have predicted there is no way President Trump would grant a posthumous pardon of African-American boxer Jack Johnson because it wouldn’t fit the racist dog whistle script. But Movie 2 is compatible with the pardon. Same with the pardon of Alice Johnson.
Movie 1 would have predicted that President Trump would underplay the fact that black unemployment reached its best level in the history of America. That’s the sort of accomplishment that would make his racist supporters stop hearing the secret racist dog whistle. It doesn’t fit. But President Trump’s frequent highlighting of gains for African-American citizens fits Movie 2 perfectly.
I realize no one reading this post will change movies because of it. My only point today is that mainstream Trump supporters are not knowingly supporting someone they believe to be a racist. It only looks that way to the folks trapped in Movie 1.
Rozanna and Kate Lilley, the daughters of playwright and poet Dorothy Hewett, say they were forced into sex aged 15 by men including the late Bob Ellis and Martin Sharp, The Australian reports.
Sharp, Australia’s foremost pop artist, designed record covers and posters for Bob Dylan, Donovan and Eric Clapton and wrote songs for Clapton’s band, Cream.
Ellis was a political commentator, write and film maker who penned 22 television and screenplays.
And speaking of statutory rape, here’s the inside story of the night Roman Polanski raped a child. Includes details of just how he set about deliberately seducing a girl he knew went to middle school.
Mueller’s indictments not only don’t indicate Russian collusion on part of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, they actually indicate the opposite, says notorious right-wing shills at…The Nation?
AT&T/Time Warner merger approved. Can’t think that this is a good thing, given how much of the local broadband market are government-enforced monopolies…
The director of the American Civil Liberties Union has now acknowledged what should have been obvious to everybody over the past several years: The ACLU is no longer a neutral defender of everyone’s civil liberties. It has morphed into a hyper-partisan, hard-left political advocacy group. The final nail in its coffin was the announcement that, for the first time in its history, the ACLU would become involved in partisan electoral politics, supporting candidates, referenda and other agenda-driven political goals.
Important safety tip: If you’re a popular band, never play Indonesia. Among the worst incidents: multiple cases of death, and Deep Purple’s manager being dropped down an elevator shaft. (Hat tip: Ann Althouse.)
In Austin news, Interim Police Chief Manly is no longer interim. Dwight thinks it’s a good move.
Speaking of basketball games no one will be willing to pay $99 a ticket for, Ted Cruz will play Jimmy Kimmel a one-on-one basketball game in Houston Saturday, with the loser coughing up $5,000 to the winner’s non-political charity of choice.
Somebody had a really shitty day:
Punchy punches Dem chances:
My 5 year old daughter heard Robert DeNiro say “Fuck Trump” and asked me what does “Fuck Trump mean daddy”? I told her it means the Republicans just won the 2018 mid terms and Trump will be President until 2024.
Austria has finally had enough of catering to jihad and giving lip-service to the idea that there are no problems integrating Muslims into their culture:
Austria’s right-wing government plans to shut seven mosques and could expel dozens of imams in what it said was “just the beginning” of a push against radical Islam and foreign funding of religious groups that Turkey condemned as racist.
The coalition government, an alliance of conservatives and the far right, came to power soon after Europe’s migration crisis on promises to prevent another influx and restrict benefits for new immigrants and refugees.
The moves follow a “law on Islam”, passed in 2015, which banned foreign funding of religious groups and created a duty for Muslim organizations to have “a positive fundamental view towards (Austria’s) state and society”.
“Political Islam’s parallel societies and radicalizing tendencies have no place in our country,” said Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who, in a previous job as minister in charge of integration, steered the Islam bill into law.
Standing next to him and two other cabinet members on Friday, far-right Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache told a news conference: “This is just the beginning.”
Austria, a country of 8.8 million people, has roughly 600,000 Muslim inhabitants, most of whom are Turkish or have families of Turkish origin.
Snip.
The ministers at the news conference said up to 60 imams belonging to the Turkish-Islamic Union for Cultural and Social Cooperation in Austria (ATIB), a Muslim group close to the Turkish government, could be expelled from the country or have visas denied on the grounds of receiving foreign funding.
A government handout put the number at 40, of whom 11 were under review and two had already received a negative ruling.
ATIB spokesman Yasar Ersoy acknowledged that its imams were paid by Diyanet, the Turkish state religious authority, but it was trying to change that.
Expect howls of outrage from the European elite, as well as numerous comparisons to You-Know-Who from the media thanks to the Austrian angle. How dare those silly Austrians think they’re a sovereign nation and defy the will of their EU betters by questioning the unquestionable?
Vienna, of course, was the site of the Ottoman Empire’s defeat in 1683, which ended Muslim attempts to conquer Europe (at least until the recent unpleasantness).
Despite Obama’s recent projection that his eight-year tenure was “scandal-free,” along with the reality that the media’s biased compliance sought to make such a startling fantasy true, the Obama administration was in many respects lawless. It will eventually rank as the most scandal-ridden administration since Warren G. Harding’s.
The Fast and Furious scandal was, among other things, about deliberate government gun-running of weapons to Mexico, perhaps in a warped effort to discredit current U.S. firearms laws. The Benghazi debacle involved a cover-up of a preplanned terrorist hit on our consulate, an attack that was possible only because it was well known that the consulate’s security was lax. The Benghazi cover-up involved U.N. ambassador Susan Rice lying five times on national television in a single day, when she claimed that the terrorist operation was the result of a spontaneous riot over a video. And to justify that reelection-cycle concoction, the video maker, a foreign resident on U.S. soil, was summarily jailed on a trumped-up probation charge.
An IRS regional high official, and Obama partisan, Lois Lerner, weaponized and discredited the IRS, by hounding conservative groups that were seeking tax-exempt status. Lerner staged a self-serving public stunt to leak her misbehavior to friendly ears — she had a reporter ask her a planted question about targeting conservatives. At her later congressional testimony, Lerner invoked the Fifth Amendment to avoid self-incrimination. She was never charged by the Obama State Department. Indeed, Obama himself, after expressing initial pseudo contriteness in the face of public furor, waited the public out before finally announcing that there was not a “smidgeon” of corruption in the IRS. Lerner, in effect, was rewarded for successfully neutralizing many conservative activist groups just months before the 2012 election. In October 2017, facing a lawsuit by conservative groups, the IRS admitted in court that it had unfairly targeted them during the Obama administration. It agreed to a multi-million-dollar settlement, and the current attorney general, Jeff Sessions, apologized to the more than 450 conservative organizations in question.
Nadine Strossen, a liberal and the former president of the American Civil Liberty Union, conceded — but only in hindsight when both Obama and she were out of their respective offices — that Obama was one of the most hostile presidents to civil liberties in history. Perhaps she was referring to the fact that Eric Holder’s and Loretta Lynch’s Justice Department had spied on Associated Press reporters, monitored the communications of Fox reporter James Rosen, and subpoenaed New York Times reporter James Risen to force him to reveal his confidential sources. Holder was also the first Attorney General in U.S. history to be held in contempt of Congress for refusing to hand over subpoenaed documents.
But it was during the 2016 election cycle that the Obama administration descended to a level of corruption not seen in a century. Right in the middle of the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email server, Obama, as judge and jury, announced that candidate Clinton had violated no criminal law while secretary of state. Obama also lied when he stated that he’d known nothing about such an unlawful server, although emails prove that he himself had communicated over it on several occasions. His FBI director, James Comey, deliberately scrambled the law and exonerated Hillary Clinton from wrongdoing, not because she had not broken the law, but, according to Comey’s own invented interpretations of the statute, because she had not intended to violate the law. Comey also admitted to tailoring his circus-like investigation of Clinton around the assumption that she would soon be president.
We are slowly appreciating over the last year that lying under oath was an Obama-administration requisite for a high position in the intelligence community.
The most frustrating aspect of all is the lack of communication. If the goal is to create a better overall experience on the site, then it would make sense to tell people who have had their accounts restricted exactly why it happened so the problem could be avoided in the future.
The fact that they don’t do so really heightens the perception that it isn’t about anything other than punitively targeting accounts that don’t fit in with the hive mind. The appearance of deliberate censorship could be gotten rid of with a bare amount of transparency and communication from Twitter. That, sadly, does not seem to be a priority.
Sharp-eyed readers will note that I referred to Robinson as an “activist” while Peter refers to him as “Alt-Right”. I used this journalistic technique intentionally, partly because it highlights what the left-wing media does all the time when referring to Left Wing terrorists like Earth First! and the like. But it also cuts to the heart of this question. If we don’t look at who the messenger is and whether we like him, and instead look at who is speaking the truth, things start to look grim for the UK establishment. The Government certainly did not speak the truth, and in fact covered up these crimes for decades. The media did at least publish the stories when they came out, but there is a strange soft peddling of the story.
The alleged perpetrators are described as “asian males”, as if some of them were from China or Korea. This leads to more questions, as we try to peel the onion to get to, you know, the truth.
Are the “asian males” actually Pakistani immigrants? Are they all muslim? Is their muslim identity a key factor in why they chose English girls as victims? To simply ask these questions is to answer them.
The Government officials damn themselves by their silence here. It’s actually worse – one single person in a position of power (a Shadow Cabinet Secretary – the Cabinet of the out of power party) actually did speak the truth here, and was promptly sacked.
It seems very unhealthy that the only people who appear to be speaking the truth here are what we’re told is an “Alt-Right” fringe.
Question 3: Is the root cause of all these crimes the fact that Europe is really bad at assimilating different cultures?
This is the Question That Must Not Be Asked, whether in Leeds Crown Court, in Cologne or Berlin, or in Paris. If Europe does a particularly poor job at assimilating immigrants from other cultures into a collective Body Politick, then the Europe-wide governmental policy of massive immigration from the 3rd World assumes a very different perspective.
You might get, you know, mass instances of gang rape.
This is a particularly ugly question, and it the question that all European governments (and their lap dog media) are trying desperately to suppress.
Because if the State will not protect the public, then the whole deal is off. Blood feud may be the only option.
On May 16, agents discovered 2,119 pounds of marijuana concealed in a commercial shipment of charcoal into the U.S. On May 20, agents discovered 56 pounds of cocaine, approximately $432,500 in street value, on a Mexican commercial bus on the McAllen-Reynosa International Bridge and another $1.4 million worth of cocaine at the Kingsville checkpoint. In the first week of May, $247,000 worth of methamphetamine was apprehended at the Falfurrias checkpoint. Over Memorial Day weekend, $2.2 million in marijuana was seized in Harlingen, another 300 pounds was confiscated in Roma, and another 90 pounds of marijuana along with 35 illegal immigrants were apprehended at the checkpoints.
Bonus: Seized baby tiger.
Charles Krauthammer is is dying of cancer, and is only expected to have weeks to live. There was probably no columnist or pundit more vital to holding Obama to account during the first year of his first term.
Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Lupe Valdez has yet to run a single Facebook ad since she won the primary. It would be some kind of anti-miracle for Valdez to run a worse campaign than Wendy Davis ran in 2014, but thus far she’s been all but invisible. Also this: “The Valdez campaign was also recently ensnared in a bit of controversy after the Houston Chronicle unearthed public records showing Valdez, ‘owes more than $12,000 in overdue taxes on seven properties in two counties.’ Valdez had been ‘campaign[ing] to close loopholes in the state’s broken property-tax system,’ according to the report.” (Hat tip: Matt Mackowiak.)
We told liberals they wouldn’t like the new rules being applied to them, but they didn’t listen. Liberals get Roseanne Barr fired, conervatives get Samantha Bee’s sponsors to pull out. (Disclaimer: I didn’t watch either of their shows.)
How #NeverTrump came to be a lifestyle choice: “These people aren’t operating from principle. The are operating from pique. Trump’s mere presence offends them because they just know they are his social and intellectual superiors.”
Indeed, how many of these widely accepted (sometimes downright cherished) assumptions can one man challenge (disrupt) in such a brief period of time? The answer is plenty. He does it by questioning what often goes unquestioned in Washington, D.C. He simply asks “Why?” Why help fund a Shiite crescent in the Middle East? Why send tax dollars to a terrorist-friendly PLO? Why support anti-American programs at the U.N.? Why a “One China” policy? Why placate deadbeat NATO partners? Why pay premium prices for the F-35 and a new Air Force One? Why force nuns to provide birth-control coverage? Why tolerate sanctuary cities and a porous border?
Five years ago, my husband and I bought a house in the emptiest county in America. We went there because the night sky is so dark, you can walk in the high desert by starlight and cast a shadow, so dark you can see distant galaxies and the zodiacal light. There are three types of people in our rural area: amateur astronomers, ranchers, and illegal aliens.
If you climb the mountains behind our house and look south, you look into Mexico. If you climb those mountains to the top, you are on one of the major drug trafficking routes into America. If you stay in the desert at the foot of the mountains, you are in rattlesnake country—the greatest biodiversity of rattlers in America, and the night path of illegal aliens.
It is not even a secret that the 60 miles between the border and Interstate 10 are treated as a no man’s land. We live and vote and pay taxes in America, but the government acts as if we are beyond the defensible perimeter of the country. Border Patrol is everywhere, but even with President Trump, they are just going through the circular motions of catch and release.
They have high tech listening stations in the mountains, trucks equipped with radar on the back roads. They know when drugs are moving through, know regular drop-offs, are adept at finding caches. But if they can’t secure the border, they can’t keep the families that live here safe—and they don’t even try.
We are the deplorables. All of my rancher neighbors have guns. Most are Evangelicals. To Democrats and open-borders Republicans, we are throwaway people. The Other. Disposable.
The reason I am not naming names, even place names, is that these are my neighbors’ stories, not mine, and my neighbors—farmers, cowboys, and ranching families, strong, resourceful, tough people—my neighbors are wary and they are weary. They fear retribution by the drug runners and coyotes who bring the illegals across, because they have seen it happen.
All of my neighbors have had encounters with illegals. Every single family. Everyone knows dozens of families whose homes have been broken into and worse—loved ones tied up, kidnapped, threatened, shot, permanently crippled by a hit and run attack, when they made too much of a fuss to authorities.
Evergreen State College is eliminating dozens of staff positions as it struggles to cope with plummeting enrollment in the wake of the protests that engulfed campus last year.
John Carmichael, the chief of staff and secretary to the Evergreen State College Board of Trustees, announced in a memo to staff and faculty members on Tuesday that the school has already cut 24 faculty lines and eliminated 19 vacant staff positions, and warned that up to 20 additional staff members could soon be laid off.
“Over the past several days, 20 staff members have been notified that they are at risk for layoff,” Carmichael wrote. “These layoffs, although necessary to stabilize the college’s budget, represent a profound loss felt by many.”
The staffing cuts, which include not renewing contracts for several adjunct faculty members, come shortly after the college revealed that it would be cutting $5.9 million from the budget in anticipation of a shortfall in applications of up to 20 percent.
Twenty-five million dollars in investable wealth. The kind of money you could afford to see dip into the red for a quarter or three, maybe even a year or two, without breaking a sweat. With $25 million, maybe, just maybe, you’re starting to be rich.
Because in this era of hyper-wealth and hyper-inequality, that is simply where rich begins—a ticket, in truth, to the first, lowly rung of rich. For most of the planet, $25 million represents unfathomable wealth. For elite private bankers, it buys their basic service.
Call it economy-class rich. Business class? That’s $100 million. First class? $200 million. Private-jet rich? Try $1 billion.
I grew up thinking that rich was owning a two-story house, so I’ve got it made. Top of the world, ma! (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Texas Supreme Court strikes down short-term rental rule. The only surprise this time is that it was San Antonio rather than Austin making the stupid law.
Solo underperforms. I’m not sure there are any larger lessons to be drawn. For what it’s worth, I saw Deadpool 2 last Saturday, and recommend it to anyone who enjoyed the original Deadpool.
Israel struck dozens of targets in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday after coming under a heavy barrage of mortar and rocket fire by Palestinian militants.
The Israeli military said it carried out over 35 airstrikes on seven sites across Gaza, including a cross-border tunnel controlled by Hamas and Islamic Jihad — the two primary militant groups in the Palestinian enclave — The Associated Press reported.
Beginning early Tuesday morning and continuing past nightfall, Palestinian militants launched roughly 70 projectiles toward southern Israel, according to the Israel Defense Forces. One mortar shell landed near a kindergarten just before it opened, and three IDF troops were injured in the bombardment.
The Daily Caller was even kind enough to embed this IDF tweeted infographic:
Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror organizations commited acts of terrorism against Israel throughout the day pic.twitter.com/LjqzOrur92
That Hamas happy kidnap tunnel Israel blew up was 1.2 miles long and extended into both Egypt and Israel.
Did you notice that this dustup barely rated a blip from our mainstream media?
It used to be that military action by Israel would dominate headlines for days, with Democrats rushing to cameras to sonorously demand the President personally intervene with Israel (always with Israel, never with the Scumbag Terrorist Enemy of the Week) to impose a unilateral ceasefire so as not to wreck the endless “Middle East Peace Process.”
Mark that down as another thing killed by the Age of Trump. It’s gone from “If It Bleeds, It Leads” to “Print It If It Hurts Trump.” (Never mind that this endless molehill mongering has only strengthened Trump.) “Car bomb explodes in Beirut” was front-page news back in the 1980s, but today there are multiple concurrent wars going on in the Middle East that won’t make the news for weeks at a time. (When’s the last time you saw a top-of-the-fold story on the war in Yemen?)
An end to the MSM’s fixation on Israel to the exlusion of every other country in the Middle East is probably all to the better. Now if only the MSM could be convinced to cover the violence committed against Americans in Democrat-run cities like Chicago and Baltimore with the same fervor they used to cover random dead Palestinians…
But then a funny thing happened. That theater of the war seemed to go into a sort of hibernation as other theaters in Syria (the Turkish incursion, the continued war in western Syria, and recently Israel bombing Iranian positions) heated up. That left several disjointed enclvaes of Islamic State control. Here’s what things looked like in at the end of 2017:
Notice that little Islamic State pocket along the Euphrates southeast of Deir ez-Zor running from Hajin to Abu Kamal on the Iraqi border. One of the great mysteries of the war is why that enclave wasn’t crushed following the fall of Deir Ez-Zor. Instead, it remained there, largely unchanged, for half a year.
The #JazeeraStorm operation aims at clearing the ISIS pocket in the northeast of Syria near Deir Ezzor. Syrian Democratic Forces are leading the charge under the cover of Coalition and Iraqi jets. The fight will be hard, but all struggles against tyranny are. Map via @Gargaristanpic.twitter.com/ZehICEla70
— Anthony Avice Du Buisson ♔ (@StoicViper) May 9, 2018
Today the village of Baqhous, directly on the Iraqi border, was captured, meaning the SDF have successfully pushed to the Euphrates there and are cooperating with Iraqi army troops to secure the border.
It’s possible that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi may be hiding in the Euphrates pocket. Given how elusive al-Baghdadi has been in previous phases of the war, I’ll believe it when we announce his capture.
An IDF statement said fighter jets had struck “dozens of military targets” belonging to Iran inside Syria. They included:
Intelligence sites associated with Iran and the “Radical Axis” – a term Israeli officials use to refer to an alliance between Iran, Syria, Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement and Palestinian militant groups such as Hamas
A logistics headquarters belonging to the Quds Force
A military logistics compound in Kiswah, a town south of Damascus
An Iranian military compound north of Damascus
Quds Force munition storage warehouses at Damascus International Airport
Intelligence systems and posts associated with the Quds Force
Observation and military posts and munition in the Golan demilitarised zone
The Iranian launcher from which the rockets were fired overnight
.
The IDF said it had also targeted several Syrian military air defence systems after they fired at the Israeli fighter jets despite an Israeli “warning”.
Meanwhile, Iran’s missile attack was reportedly a massive failure. “Four of its missiles were intercepted by the Iron Dome defense system and the rest fell in Syrian territory.”
Let’s get the obligatory meme out of the way:
How real remains to be seen. It’s not remotely 1947, 1967, or 1973 real, or even Lebanon 2006 real. It’s probably more real right now than Bekaa Valley 1982 real, which was plenty real enough.
So, I dunno. A three, maybe?
Livemap shows the activity in the theater:
So what happens now? Does the situation escalate or deescalate? I suspect deescalate, mainly because Israel may have run out of Iranian targets in Syria to bomb…
resident Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal is the greatest boost for American and global security in decades.
If you think that is an exaggeration, then you evidently think the Obama administration’s injection of well over a hundred billion dollars — some of it in the form of cash bribes — into the coffers of the world’s leading state sponsor of anti-American terrorism was either trivial or, more delusionally, a master-stroke of statecraft.
Of course, there’s a lot of delusion going around. After repeatedly vowing to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons (with signature “If you like your health insurance, you can keep your health insurance” candor), President Obama, and his trusty factotum John Kerry, made an agreement that guaranteed Iran would obtain a nuclear weapon.
They rationalized this dereliction with the nostrum that an unverifiable delay in nuclear-weapons development, coupled with Iran’s coup in reestablishing lucrative international trade relations, would tame the revolutionary jihadist regime, such that it would be a responsible government by the time the delay ended. Meantime, we would exercise an oh-so-sophisticated brand of “strategic patience” as the mullahs continued abetting terrorism, mass-murdering Syrians, menacing other neighbors, evolving ballistic missiles, crushing domestic dissent, and provoking American military forces — even abducting our sailors on the high seas.
And, of course, the most risible self-deception of all: The only alternative to this capitulation was war.
In point of fact, war was not the alternative to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. War was the result of the JCPOA.
Obama said the mullahs would use the windfall to rebuild their country (while Kerry grudgingly confessed that a slice would still be diverted to the jihad). Instead, billions of dollars poured into Iran by Obama’s deal promptly poured out to Syria, where it funded both sides of the war. Cash flowed to the Taliban, where it funded the war on the American-backed government. It flowed to Hamas and Hezbollah for the war on Israel. It flowed to Yemen, funding a proxy war against Saudi Arabia.
The JCPOA made Iran better at war than it has ever been — and that’s saying something.
The challenge of Iran has never been the specter of nukes. The challenge is the jihadist regime. But the JCPOA was a lifeline to a regime whose zeal to acquire mass-destruction weapons betrays its fear of internal revolt. The regime came to the bargaining table knowing Obama could be rolled, but it was driven to the table by a global economic-sanctions framework, principally constructed by the U.S. Congress. The sanctions choked the pariah regime, providing the great mass of Iranian dissenters with hope that their tormentors could be overthrown — hope that Obama had dashed in 2009, when he turned a deaf ear as the regime brutalized protesters.
The JCPOA empowered the totalitarians. Trump’s exit squeezes them.
The deal was a farce that literally obligated the United States not merely to accede to Iran’s enrichment of uranium but to help protect Iran’s nuclear facilities. (See JCPOA Article 10, Annex III, Sec. 10 (“Nuclear Security”): obliging the U.S. to help strengthen Iran’s ability to “prevent, protect and respond to nuclear security threats to nuclear facilities,” including “sabotage.”) As I’ve previously outlined, every time the president recertified the deal, as federal law required, he had to make two representations, neither of which was ever true: (a) that Iran was “transparently, verifiably, and fully implementing the agreement,” and (b) that continuing the JCPOA was “vital to the national security interests of the United States.” The Obama administration spared Iran from revealing the history of its nuclear program, which would have been necessary to establish a baseline for compliance purposes; it cut side deals — concealed from Congress — that made verification procedures an impenetrable private arrangement between Iran and the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency; and it agreed to limits on what IAEA was allowed to report about Iranian violations.
There was plenty of coverage of that yesterday, with the Obamanations shaking their tiny fists at their “achievements” being undone, and the parliament of the Islamic Public of Iran chanting “Death to America” and burning an American flag, which is pretty much their go-to move for anything.
Second, in a story not nearly as well-reported, Israel once again hit Iranian targets in Syria, this time around Damascus.
Here’s video of the aftermath:
(At this point the armies of the world should be asking themselves exactly what good are Russian air defense systems, since they certainly don’t seem to be capable of detecting or shooting down Israeli planes or missiles…)
All of Iran’s recent gains in regional influence and power have come on the heels of a vacuum in American leadership, the foolish lifting of sanctions, and Obama airlifting the mullahs pallets of cash. Those days are over,
Former Secretary of State John Kerry reportedly tried to meddle in Middle East peace talks, allegedly telling a close associate of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas not to “yield to President Trump’s demands.”
Israeli news outlet Maariv reported on the apparent meeting between Kerry and Hussein Agha in London, where the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee also reportedly floated a possible encore bid in 2020.
But in the conversation, Kerry reportedly told Agha to share a message with Abbas – urging him to “hold on and be strong” during talks with the Trump administration and “play for time … [and] not yield to President Trump’s demands.”
Kerry, who served as former President Barack Obama’s secretary of state during his second term, also reportedly told Agha that Trump would not be in office for long, suggesting he could be out in a year.
According to the report, Kerry used derogatory terms when referring to Trump, and offered to help the Palestinians create an alternative peace initiative. He reportedly asked Abbas not to attack the U.S. or the Trump administration, but rather focus attacks on the president himself.
(Caveat: I don’t know enough about Maariv to judge the veracity of its sources (it’s generally described as “centrist” and critical of the Netanyahu government), and the report includes those “allegedly” and “apparent” words that are so frequently the hallmark of fake news in American media outlets.)
I would say this is a new low for Kerry, but the Iran deal is still more idiotic and there was little indication that the intransigent dumbasses running the Palestinian state were even remotely interested in making peace with Israel anyway. But trying to thwart any chance at peace in the Middle East because you hate President Trump, hate Israel, and treat the terrorism-loving Palestinians as some sort of progressive victimhood identity politics totem for Democrats is plenty low indeed.
This would also appear to be a clear violation of the Logan Act, everyone’s favorite unenforced statute from 1799 that criminalizes freelance negotiation by American citizens with foreign governments hostile to the United States.
Hillary Clinton was running a crooked pay-for-play graft machine out of the State Department and yet, somehow, she was only Obama’s second-worst Secretary of State…
Texas law enforcement officials said they have foiled an alleged ISIS-inspired attack on a north Texas mall with the arrest of a teenager whom authorities said tried to recruit others to join his planned attack.
Matin Azizi-Yarand, 17, of Plano was arrested on Tuesday on charges he was plotting to shoot up the Stonebriar Centre Mall in neighboring Frisco, Texas, Collin County District Attorney Greg Willis announced in a statement.
Law enforcement officials say Azizi-Yarand had sent more than $1,400 to others for the purchase of weapons and body-armor. Authorities allege that he was planning to carry out the attack in mid-May. Officials say the teen also planned to “disseminate” a “Message to America” explaining the motives behind the alleged plot.
Azizi-Yarand talked online with undercover FBI confidential sources about his desire to either “make Hijrah [a Muslim term meaning to travel to a more desirable place],” or to conduct a terrorist attack within the United States, according to court documents.
Authorities said Azizi-Yarand even spent time at the Stonebriar mall planning how he would carry out the alleged plot. A court affidavit details the teen’s alleged communication with an FBI source, in which he’s accused of describing how he would kill a responding police officer.
This is not the first time the Islamic State has targeted the Metroplex for a terrorist attack:
By my count, Islamic State-pledged terrorists are 0-3 attacking the Metroplex.
But it brings up the question: Why have all the Texas Islamic State jihadi attempts targeted the Metroplex rather than, say, Houston, San Antonio or Austin? (There was Ft. Hood jihadi shooter Nidal Hasan, but he predated the rise of the Islamic State. And there was the wanna be Houston jihadi, but I don’t think he even got to the planning stages.)
