Filed under: Cuba, Foreign Policy, Iran, National Security, Politics, Terrorism | Tags: Nuclear Weapons for Iran, Relations with Cuba, The Obama Doctrine
The messages from the Iran nuclear negotiation are mixed. Some informants say we are giving up all inspections in order to get a deal, the White House insists that this is not the case, but nobody believes Obama any more.
We are opening a consulate in Cuba, though Congress has refused any financing. Iran will honor an agreement not to develop nuclear weapons. Obama will walk away from the negotiations. ISIS is a JV team, Rachel Dolezal is black, Caitlyn Jenner is a woman, ObamaCare is working and popular, the polar ice caps are disappearing, but the military has been sent to measure them to see how fast. We are more respected around the world than ever before. What is one to make of all this? Reality is fleeting.
The best explanation for Obama that I have found is from Daniel Pipes at the Middle East Forum, which I will include once again:
As a man of the Left, Obama sees the United States historically as having exerted a malign influence on the outside world. Greedy corporations, an overly powerful military-industrial complex, a yahoo nationalism, engrained racism, and cultural imperialism combined to render America, on balance, a force for evil.
The Obama Doctrine is simple and universal: Warm relations with adversaries and cool them with friends.
Several assumptions underlie this approach: The U.S. government morally must compensate for its prior errors. Smiling at hostile states will inspire them to reciprocate. Using force creates more problems than it solves.
This is important, and it was confirmed today in the video below, by “Benjamin J. Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser to President Obama. He was the chief U.S . negotiator in the secret normalization talks with Cuba and has been a central player in the making of American foreign policy since 2009, both as key adviser and as the president’s chief foreign policy speechwriter.”
In this interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, national correspondent for The Atlantic, they discuss the worldview of President Obama, focusing on Cuba, the Iran talks, and the continuing crisis across the broader Middle East.
Valerie Jarrett has said that President Obama has just been bored all his life, presumably not having been sufficiently challenged. He had an adjunct job teaching constitutional law at University of Chicago Law School, but his students indicated that he taught mostly Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, which seems to be an advanced course in manipulating people to get them to do what you want them to do. That doesn’t indicate any particular deep study of the Constitution.
Obama appointed an extraordinary collection of Czars, and asks that his briefings come in the form of a short paragraph or two, with 3 choices of actions to take, and he’ll pick one. Other than that, he doesn’t want much contact with members of his administration and associates only with his small inner circle, when he’s not watching sports on TV or playing golf.
That kind of sums up what I have gleaned about what Obama does and why he does it. The mindset is so foreign to everything I know about Iran and Cuba that I find it almost impossible to absorb. I grasp his view of Iran, but I think he’s subjecting both America and Israel to dangerous and immediate threat. Cuba, I just don’t get. We are offered nothing, and by encouraging tourism and trade, giving Cuba the freedom to resume their anti-American arms dealing and drug trade across Latin America. They have no intention of offering more freedom to the Cuban people. Raul Castro has said so.
Having lost control of Congress, Obama, never willing to engage with Republicans, has determined to just go ahead and do everything he wants to do. Kind of a nyaah–nyaah–just try to stop me! He will use executive orders, executive notes, just order things to be done. They always say that inside of every Liberal is a tyrant trying to get out. Or did I miss something when Senate Democrats are voting to repeal the First Amendment so they can suppress political criticism?
Filed under: Capitalism, Domestic Policy, Environment, Junk Science, Politics, Regulation | Tags: Green Zealots, Power Grab, Rogue Agency
The EPA has just finalized one of the biggest land grabs in American history.
Just reprimanded by the Supreme Court, the EPA is anxious to try their luck again. Under the Clean Water Act, the EPA was granted the authority to regulate the navigable waters of the United States to see that they remained clean.
Under the Clean Water Rule, all “tributaries” will be regulated by the federal government. Broadly defined, which they intend, this means anything moist that eventually flows into something that can be defined as a “navigable river,” including the roadside ditch above, and even smaller trickles.
Under the same rule, the word “adjacent” is stretched from the Supreme Court’s definition of actually “abutting” what most Americans regard as a real water of the United States to anything “neighboring,” “contiguous,” or “bordering” a real water, terms which are again stretched to include whole floodplains and riparian areas. Floodplains are typically based on a 100-year flood, but a separate regulation would stretch that to a 500-year flood.
And, finally, under the rule, the EPA cynically throws in a catch-all “significant nexus” test meant as a shout out to Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s opinion in Rapanos v. United States when, in fact, the EPA’s rule makes a mockery of Kennedy’s opinion and of no fewer than three Supreme Court rulings.
Under the three approaches, no land or “water” is beyond the reach of the federal government, never mind the traditional understanding of private property or state and local control of land use.
Farmers, ranchers, dairymen and everyone in rural America are in panic mode. Not only does this rule allow the EPA onto their land, but it throws wide open to environmental group-led citizen lawsuits that promise to go far beyond what the EPA envisioned. Citizen lawsuits are controlled only by the rule. The rule carries with it fines to the tune of $37,500 a day. The EPA has a habit of imposing fines big enough to scare the accused of whatever violation into immediate compliance.
I grew up very rural, and I’m sure city people cannot imagine the havoc this rule could cause. Although here in the Seattle area, a good portion of our lawns could be considered wetlands for a portion of the year. It rains a lot, and there is runoff. Farmers and ranchers spend a significant amount of time ditching, or controlling the flow of water where it is not wanted.
The goal of the Environmental Protection Agency has little to do with the environment, but only to do with how environmental regulation can be used to further their political goals of control, ending private property, and bringing on the utopia where everyone is, at last, truly equal. Well, except for those in charge, of course.
Filed under: Domestic Policy, Economy, Energy, Regulation | Tags: Administration Arrogance, Restraint on EPA, Supreme Court Decision
The White House said today that the Supreme Court’s decision today on the EPA overreach claiming that the costs of their regulation don’t matter — wouldn’t impact the huge pending EPA rule imposing regulations of existing power plants. I assume this is Josh Earnest posing as “the White House.” Odd.
“Obviously, we’re disappointed with the outcome,” he said. “I will say, based on what we have read so far, there is no reason that this court ruling should have an impact on the ability of the administration to develop and implement the clean power plant [ruling].”
If the administration is prepared to ignore the Supreme Court ruling, then I assume the rest of us are free to ignore the other decisions that we aren’t that convinced were rightly decided.
Filed under: Domestic Policy, Energy, Law, Regulation | Tags: Enviromental Zealots, Michiga v EPA, Supreme Court
In the case of Michigan v. EPA, the Supreme Court addressed a matter that is genuinely outside of voter’s control, the way-too-rapid expansion of the regulatory state. The problems all began with the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. The problem seemed simple to Congress. We want clean air and clean water, and that’s what the EPA should be doing.
But the EPA is an agency filled with environmental activists and zealots, fully in line with Obama’s unwarranted belief in a dangerous global warming, and sure that the correct answer is to get rid of fossil fuels, carbon dioxide as a pollutant, and carbon in general. The answer is to force Americans to want to rely clean energy sources like solar and wind, with no understanding that solar and wind do not produce enough energy to be a significant source of power.
The EPA wants to force all coal-fired power plants to either shut down or do a lot or retrograding to eliminate any emissions from that nasty fossil fuel. Around 40 percent of our electricity is supplied by coal-fired power plants. The EPA’s new regulations would cost $9.6 billion annually, but the EPA claimed that it was appropriate to consider only public health risks. Well, nobody seems to know if there actually are any public health risks. They always put asthma at the top of their list of future childhood death, but the medical profession does not currently know what causes asthma, so that is a complete canard. By some estimates the cost of electricity would go up by as much as $1,200 per year for every American household.
The majority opinion, authored by Justice Antonin Scalia, found that the EPA “unreasonably” interpreted the Clean Air Act to constitute a vehicle by which the environmental regulatory agency could institute new guidelines that were all but overtly aimed at shuttering “dirty” power plants. “EPA strayed well beyond the bounds of reasonable interpretation in concluding that cost is not a factor relevant to the appropriateness of regulating power plants,” the opinion read. That’s significant; contrary to the wealth of shallow emotionality that suffices for modern political commentary, profits matter. Individual livelihoods and the economic health of the nation are still protected by the Constitution, and they should not be subordinated to environmental sustainability in the zero-sum game that has become America’s regulatory culture.
Filed under: Domestic Policy, Health Care, Junk Science, Regulation | Tags: Control v. Liberty, Organizing Doctors, Patient Consultations
Americans generally trust their doctors, so the White House wants these trusted medical professionals to help out in the administration’s propaganda campaign to convince the people to support Obama’s global warming campaign.
We also need doctors, nurses and citizens, like all of you”President Obama said in a taped speech presented to medical professionals gathered at the White House, “to get to work to raise awareness and organize folks for real change.
The EPA has long tried to cloak their power grab and excessive regulation under risible claims that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant and must be eliminated. As Alan Carlin explained:
The much maligned carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, as EPA and Obama claim, but rather a basic input to plant photosynthesis and growth, which is the basis of life on Earth. Decreasing atmospheric CO2 levels would decrease plant productivity and therefore the food supply for the rest of the ecosystem and humans, and vice versa. Further, attempts to reduce it will prove enormously expensive, futile, harmful to human welfare, and in the longer run, to environmental improvement. It is now increasingly evident that efforts to reduce CO2 emissions by governmental coercion will have important non-environmental adverse effects in terms of loss of freedom of scientific inquiry, economic growth and development, and the rule of law.
Obama’s summit included the U.S. Surgeon General, top administration officials, and public health experts from around the country telling doctors nurses and other conference goers how to talk about global warming with their patients.
The central message: doctors should warn their patients that global warming could make their health worse. Uh huh.
As if doctors weren’t busy enough. The Surgeon General also wants them to ask their patients if they have any guns in the house. You’ve probably noticed that the inevitable paperwork you have to fill out is getting increasingly nosy. And with everything computerized, your entire medical record is open to any hacker who is interested.
Filed under: Economy, Global Warming, Junk Science, Military, National Security, Politics | Tags: Measuring Arctic Ice, Military Tasks, Misguided Priorities
You may remember the president’s commencement speech at the Coast Guard Academy. He told the graduates “I am here today to say that climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security and, make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country. And so we need to act — and we need to act now.” A lot of people giggled at that one.
The Defense Department, obedient to their commander in chief, calls global warming a true national security threat and has begun instituting a host of environmental measures which range from building clean energy projects at military installations to the use of expensive green fuels in military planes. Military officers who question the president’s strategies seem to face early retirement.
A recent report from the Government Accountability Office, according to the Washington Times, notes another example— the commitment of U.S. Military forces to monitor sea ice levels in the Arctic. The administration argues that decreasing ice could force the Pentagon to “institute a military and homeland security presence in the region.”
Critics charge the president is directing the military from its real mission of protecting America, but that is not high on the president’s list. Last Monday, the White House tried once again to justify its climate change agenda with a new report claiming tens of thousands of lives will be saved through restrictions on carbon.
Difficulty in developing accurate sea ice models, variability in the Arctic’s climate, and the uncertain rate of activity in the region create challenges for DOD to balance the risk of having inadequate capabilities or insufficient capacity when required to operate in the region with the cost of making premature or unnecessary investments. DOD plans to mitigate this risk by monitoring the changing Arctic conditions to determine the appropriate timing for capability investments.
Republicans on Capitol Hill are taking aim at the EPA’s budget and restricting the president’s ill-advised global warming agenda through funding cuts. The Supreme Court decision coming Monday will have a bearing on all this.
On would think with the rise in ISIS terrorist attacks across the world, measuring the ice in the Arctic, since surveys show it to be unusually extensive, could be put off for another day. There has been no warming at all for over 18 years, and things are getting colder — not warmer.
Filed under: Freedom, Law, The United States | Tags: Justice, Liberty, The Court
From the Archives, May, 2009
Lady Justice is the symbol of the judiciary. She carries three symbols of the rule of law: a sword symbolizing the court’s coercive power, scales representing the weighing of competing claims, and a blindfold indicating impartiality. This particular representation says:
Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civilized society. It ever has been, ever will be pursued until it be obtained or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.
The judicial oath required of every federal judge and justice says “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I…will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me… under the Constitution and laws of the United States, so help me God.
President Obama has a record of statements on justice. In September 2005, on the confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts, Obama said:
What matters on the Supreme Court is those 5 percent of cases that are truly difficult. In those cases, adherence to precedent and rules of construction and interpretation will only get you through the 25th mile of the marathon. That last mile can only be determined on the basis of one’s deepest values, one’s core concerns, one’s broader perspectives on how the world works, and the depth and breadth of one’s empathy.
During a July 17, 2007 appearance at a Planned Parenthood conference:
We need somebody who’s got the heart to recognize — the empathy to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old. And that’s the criteria by which I’m going to be selecting my judges.
During a Democratic primary debate on November 25, 2007, Obama was asked whether he would insist that any nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court supported abortion rights for women:
I would not appoint someone who doesn’t believe in the right to privacy…I taught constitutional law for 10 years, and when you look at what makes a great Supreme Court justice, it’s not just the particular issue and how they ruled. But it’s their conception of the court. And part of the role of the court is that it is going to protect people who may be vulnerable in the political process, the outsider, the minority, those who are vulnerable, those who don’t have a lot of clout.
During a May 1, 2009 press briefing:
Now the process of selecting someone to replace Justice Souter is among my most serious responsibilities as president, so I will seek somebody with a sharp and independent mind and a record of excellence and integrity. I will seek someone who understands that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a casebook; it is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people’s lives, whether they can make a living and care for their families, whether they feel safe in their homes and welcome in their own nation. I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people’s hopes and struggles, as an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes. I will seek somebody who is dedicated to the rule of law, who honors our constitutional traditions, who respects the integrity of the judicial process and the appropriate limits of the judicial role. I will seek somebody who shares my respect for constitutional values on which this nation was founded and who brings a thoughtful understanding of how to apply them in our time.
“Empathy” is the word that has caused so much concern. For empathy has no place in jurisprudence. Federal judges swear an oath to administer justice without respect to persons. If they are to feel more partial to the “young teenage mom,” the “disabled,” the “African-American,” the “gay,” the “old,” then they are not and cannot be impartial, and the rule of law counts for nothing. The “depth and breadth of one’s empathy” is exactly what the judicial oath insists that judges renounce. That impartiality is what guarantees equal protection under the law.
That is what the blindfold is all about.
Filed under: Domestic Policy, Law, The Constitution, The United States | Tags: Death Row, Power Plants, Redistricting
After finding something or other somewhere in the Constitution that recognized a national right to same-sex marriage and rewriting the Affordable Care Act to fix the actual language that Congress wrote into the law, there are still three more big decisions, which we will hear on Monday.
1. Execution Methods
Glossip v. Gross
At issue is whether the sedative midazolam presents an unconstitutional risk of severe pain in executions of condemned criminals. Three men on Oklahoma’s death row claim that midazolam, the anesthetic the state plans to administer before introducing paralytic and heart-stopping drugs to their bloodstreams, is unreliable, exposing them to an unconstitutional risk of severe pain as they are put to death.
2. Power-Plant Emissions
Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA et.al.
Issue: Whether the EPA unreasonably disregarded costs when it decided to regulate power plant emissions of mercury and other air toxins. The regulations would cost $9.6 billion annually, according to EPA estimates. But the agency said it was appropriate to consider only public health risks—not industry costs—when it decided to regulate coal- and oil-fired generation plants.
3. Congressional Redistricting
Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission
Issue: Whether a state may transfer redistricting authority from the legislature to a nonpartisan independent commission. Arizona voters in 2000 passed a ballot initiative that shifted responsibility for drawing congressional districts from the state legislature to an independent redistricting commission made up of two Democrats, two Republicans and an independent.
Filed under: Israel, Middle East, National Security, Politics, Terrorism, The United States | Tags: Fighting Terrorism, ISIS, Middle East Aflame
(The Imam Sadiq Mosque in Kuwait City after a suicide
bomber killed at least 25 Shiite worshipers at prayer)
Peter Brooks, senior fellow for national security affairs at the Heritage Foundation wrote today that: We have had nine terrorist plots this year in the United States. So far all of the plots in 2015 have had ties to ISIS off in Iraq and Syria, whether the plotters were direct (recruited by ISIS) or indirect (inspired by ISIS). FBI Director James Comey said in February, that his agency is investigating Islamic State-related cases in all 50 states.
They heavily use social media, using publicly available encryption found on the internet to chat in complete privacy. They can hide their computer IP addresses, and are moving over to the so-called “dark web” where a lot of very bad actors reside. Their technology is pretty good, their propaganda is increasingly capable of reaching and radicalizing those here who would do us harm.
In Britain, Lord Richards of Herstmonceux, the former Chief of the Defense Staff, has warned that Muslim extremism is a “real threat” to the world, and he condemned dithering politicians who are too reluctant to lead the way. He warned that a “hell of a lot of damage” is going to be wreaked by ISIS in coming years, and leaders are failing to plan properly. “I think the problem is that we have not seen that we need to approach the issue of Muslim extremism as we might approach World War Two back in the Thirties.
He said “Right now, in the ranks of the armed forces, and the army in particular, are the most experienced, battle hardened people since the end of the Second World War.
Jihadists like anniversaries, so their three terror attacks took place on the eve of ISIS declaration of a caliphate last June 29. They only took credit for one of the atrocities — a suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque in Kuwait, where 27 people were killed, but all going off at the same time.Ramadan began last week, and an ISIS spokesman called on “mujahadeen everywhere” to make it “a month of disasters for the infidels.”
In Tunisia, a gunman posing as a tourist killed at least 37 people, most European vacationers at a beach resort. In France, a car-bombing attempt at an American-owned chemical plant near Lyon failed to cause major damage, but not before the attacker planted the decapitated head of his boss on the plant’s gate, along with an Islamic flag.
President Obama recently deployed 450 additional trainers to help the Iraqi army fight, but they aren’t getting enough Iraqi volunteers, which in the wake of ISIS drowning captives, removing heads, burning in cages is not really surprising when the Americans have such restrictive Rules of Engagement, and have demonstrated that they are undependable allies. ISIS is a direct threat to the West as well as to the region in general, and it needs to be dealt with that way.
Obama’s view of the Middle East and ISIS isn’t a policy for dealing with this problem. As he explained, he doesn’t have a complete strategy yet. Little late in the game for developing one.
Filed under: Domestic Policy, Freedom, Law, Politics | Tags: FIRE and Free Speech, Importance of Dissent, Steven Pinker
Steven Pinker is a Harvard psychology professor and bestselling author. Dissent plays a crucial role in keeping society sane. We have pluralistic influence making society crazy. It’s not what people actually think, it’s what they believe everyone else thinks too. Here he talks about Taboos, Political Correctness, and Dissent. Few are willing to be the little boy who stands up and says that the King is naked, and that’s the problem.
Filed under: Capitalism, Domestic Policy, Freedom, Law, Politics | Tags: FIRE and Free Speech, Jonathan Rauch, The Rise of the Crazies
Most of the idiocy about anything Confederate, anything critical of gay marriage, unisex bathrooms, comes from the Universities. When the Humanities have turned to Women’s Studies, Black Studies, Diversity and microaggressions and triggering, and for the most part dumped Shakespeare as another dead white male, it’s getting really weird out there. Apple has dumped all their military games that include the Civil War, Amazon. Walmart, eBay and Sears have all dropped any reproduction of the battle flag like a hot potato. University buildings must be renamed, statues and memorials are being defaced.
Book-burning comes next. They have already announced that Gone With the Wind must go, but that’s probably the only Civil War book they know, clearly they haven’t read any history. When the current hysteria dies down, we need to speak out, as Jonathan Rauch has long done, and is doing now in recognition of its importance.
The gift shop at the Gettysburg memorial has just eliminated the Confederate Battle Flag from their merchandise. Apparently we were fooled all along, it was just a maneuver where the Yankees fought Yankees, for what reason I don’t know.
Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Freedom, Politics, Progressivism | Tags: Critical Thiking, Hillary
The Supreme Court has declared the Constitution meaningless, or at least the separation of powers. They are busy making law from the bench, which is not their function. Their job is to decide if a law in question agrees with the Constitution, not make up new and different emanations. In Australia, Canada and Britain, you can go to prison for expressing objectionable speech. Think about that.
The Left has long been at war with free speech. They often have really bad ideas, but they don’t like to be disagreed with, and they really and truly want you prevented from so doing. Hillary has said that when she becomes president, she will have a litmus test for Supreme Court candidates. They have to promise to repeal the Court’s Citizens United decision. Well, of course she would, it was a campaign piece critical of Hillary, but it was about free speech.
The Court has firmly said that corporate money spent on a campaign according to the election laws is free speech. The McCain-Finegold law that limited spending on political advocacy by corporations and unions was unconstitutional. Lively political debate is supposed to benefit everyone. The Left was sure that Union spending was fine, but not corporate money. It all depends on whose Ox is getting gored.
Our Universities have become hotbeds of liberal thought, and they are teaching the current generation of students that they are little snowflakes who must not be offended. This falls under the “inside every liberal is a tyrant trying to get out” department. Nobody likes to be insulted or enjoys being offended, but suck it up kids.
Tyranny is a lot worse than merely being offended. Eventually that gets around to disposing of those who disagree. Today, it is the attempt to rename any campus buildings that were named for anyone who was a racist, that designation to be supplied by the “offended” kids. Be very careful what you wish for.
That said, the professors and administrators who allow and encourage such things as “microaggressions” and “triggering” should be fired. You are not engaging in critical thinking (supposedly a goal of higher ed) but destroying clear thought. “Life is hard” our parents or grandparents tried to explain to us. Life gets a lot harder if you cannot distinguish between truth and falsehood, right and wrong, or reality and fantasy.
American Elephants 