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May 2018

The Trump Land Mine By Victor Davis Hanson

Explosives require careful handling. Sometimes they blow up in your face.

After the 2016 election, the so-called deep state was confident that it had the power easily to either stop, remove, or delegitimize the outlier Donald Trump and his presidency.

Give it credit, the Washington apparat quite imaginatively pulled out all the stops: implanting Obama holdover appointees all over the Trump executive branch; filing lawsuits and judge shopping; organizing the Resistance; pursuing impeachment writs; warping the FISA courts; weaponizing the DOJ and FBI; attempting to disrupt the Electoral College; angling for enactment of the 25th Amendment or the emoluments clause; and unleashing Hollywood celebrities, Silicon Valley, and many in Wall Street to suffocate the Trump presidency in its infancy.

Silicon Valley likewise has lost its luster. Once upon a time, America loved a hip Steve Jobs, decked out in black, fiddling with a new Apple gadget on stage in front of an entranced televised audience of millions. Jobs appeared as a brilliant and typically American entrepreneur, not a partisan talking down to hoi polloi.

Things have radically changed since then. The reputation of Big Tech is one of hyper-partisan politics, data miners, snoops, Bowdlerizers and censors, monopolists, progressive multibillionaires, and adolescents in arrested development who exempt themselves from the consequences of what their ideologies inflict on others.

If the deep state really wanted to dismantle and disarm Donald Trump, it would have been wise first to carefully learn how he was constructed and wired — and thus why he was especially dangerous to them.

Thoughts on ‘Unfettered Power’ By Roger Kimball

Where to start? The phrase “unfettered power,” to which I will return, may put you in mind of Lord Acton’s famous observation that “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” But the context of Acton’s mot was grand politics. “Great men,” he went on to say, “are almost always bad men.”

What we see in the present case—the case of the hall-of-mirrors, matryoshka-doll-like investigation tirelessly pursued by Robert Mueller and his band of merry Democratic prosecutors—is not grand but shabby.

In just a week, we will have reached the first anniversary of what threatens to be an interminable investigation of—what? It’s hard to keep track. Is it charges dating back to 2005 of bank fraud against Paul Manafort, who was briefly Donald Trump’s campaign manager? Or does it have to do with a taxi business in which Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, is involved? It’s hard to say.

Mission Creep
Robert Mueller’s original marching orders authorized him to look into “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.” That was the main thing. Acting Attorney General (as he was then) Rod Rosenstein also added that Mueller was authorized to investigate “any matters that arose or may arise [my emphasis] directly from the investigation” as well as “any other matters within the scope” of the governing statute.

That was last May. In August, Rosenstein issued another memo. I would like to tell you what it says, but can only give you the most general sense because, in the version released to the public, most of it is blacked out—“redacted,” to use the term of art that has replaced “collusion” as the political word du jour. Someday I hope to see a communication from the Justice Department or our intelligence services that is 100 percent redacted. The memo was released, just not the words on the memo.

An Israel-Iran war is unlikely – for the time being Israel won’t take the risk of war short of an immediate existential threat, and Iran is unlikely to present one

An Israeli-Iran war would not be a limited conflict. Both sides would attempt to destroy the other’s capacity to fight, and the odds for the moment favor Israel.

Two dozen Israeli missiles or bomber sorties could wipe out Iran’s economy in a matter of hours, and that makes a war unlikely for the time being. Fewer than a dozen power plants generate 60% of Iran’s electricity, and eight refineries produce 80% of its distillates. A single missile strike could disable each of these facilities, and bunker-buster bombs of the kind that Israel used last month in Lebanon would entirely destroy them. And as Hillel Frisch points out in the Jerusalem Post, with a bit more effort Israel could eliminate the Port of Kharg from which Iran exports 90% of its hydrocarbons.

After Israeli intelligence stole half a ton of Iranian secret documents in an operation that reportedly involved 100 Mossad agents, Iran must assume that Israel has mapped every point of vulnerability in the country and has considerable capacity for sabotage in the event of war. Iran doesn’t want a war that might end in a Carthaginian peace.

George Soros and the ‘Caravan’ Left-wing NGOs circle the wagons around a rogue U.N. commission.By Mary Anastasia O’Grady

The “caravan” of Central Americans at the southern U.S. border seeking asylum has some conservatives wringing their hands about a Hispanic invasion. They should instead be asking what’s behind the destabilization of the countries these desperate migrants have fled.

Central American corruption, statism and crony capitalism have led to poverty and exclusion. The region’s classical liberals understand this connection and have fought to strengthen the rule of law. But their efforts have been undermined by the drug trade financing criminal networks that overwhelm institutions.

Now there is substantial evidence that a U.S.-funded fix for the problem in Guatemala, using a United Nations prosecutor, has itself been corrupted by unscrupulous actors and left-wing U.N. ideology.

As I wrote last month, the U.N. body is the International Commission on Impunity in Guatemala, or CICIG by its Spanish initials. It was established in 2006 with the best intentions to investigate the crimes of underworld networks. But the U.S. Helsinki Commission hearing on Capitol Hill last week revealed vile human-rights abuses by CICIG prosecutors in a case involving a family of Russian migrants—the Bitkovs. The case raises questions about whether CICIG has gone rogue.

That is unless you are one of many nongovernmental organizations and media operations working in Guatemala that are funded by George Soros’s Open Society Foundations and fellow travelers. In that case your instructions are to circle the wagons to defend CICIG prosecutor Iván Velásquez and destroy those who dare suggest that the case be judged on its merits.

This rush to dismiss flagrant violations of the law heightens concerns in Guatemala that CICIG has become a political tool of the NGO left. Americans are rightly asking why the U.S. finances this U.N. operation devoid of accountability and transparency.

The Helsinki Commission hearing on April 27 illuminated the case of Igor and Irina Bitkov and their daughter Anastasia. They fled persecution in Vladimir Putin’s Russia and landed in Guatemala where they became victims of a human-trafficking scam. CICIG prosecuted the family as criminals, in cooperation with a Kremlin-owned bank, and put them in jail, flouting a constitutional court ruling. CONTINUE AT SITE

After Obama’s Iran Deal Trump can exit because Obama never built U.S. support for the pact.

President Trump on Tuesday withdrew the U.S. from the Iran nuclear deal, rightly calling it “defective at its core.” Yet he also offered Iran a chance to negotiate a better deal if it truly doesn’t want a nuclear weapon. Mr. Trump’s challenge now is to build a strategy and alliances to contain Iran until it accepts the crucial constraints that Barack Obama refused to impose.

The Obama Administration spent years negotiating a lopsided pact that gave Tehran $100 billion of sanctions relief and a chance to revive its nuclear-weapons program after a 15-year waiting period. Instead of cutting off “all of Iran’s pathways to a bomb” as Mr. Obama claimed, the deal delayed the country’s entry into the nuclear club and gave the mullahs cash to fund their Middle East adventurism.
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Mr. Trump outlined a more realistic strategy in October, promising to work with allies to close the deal’s loopholes, address Tehran’s missile and weapons proliferation, and “deny the regime all paths to a nuclear weapon.” An Iranian nuke would be a modest problem if Iran were a democracy. But the Islamic Republic is no India and has a four-decade history of oppressing its own people, taking foreign hostages and threatening neighbors with extinction.

State Department policy chief Brian Hook spent months shuttling between European capitals to get an agreement to strengthen inspections of suspected nuclear sites, stop Iran from developing ballistic missiles and eliminate the deal’s sunset provisions. Deal signatories China and Russia don’t share U.S. strategic goals in the Mideast, but the Trump Administration’s reasonable presumption is that Britain, France and Germany do.

Opportunity Knocks Job openings nearly matched the number of job seekers in March.

It seems only yesterday the press was writing that in the near future many people would have to seek jobs as software coders. Not to knock coding, but how much more interesting a stronger economy looks today.

The Labor Department said Tuesday that the U.S. economy has arrived at this remarkable juncture: There were 6.59 million unemployed Americans in March, and the number of jobs waiting to be filled that month was 6.55 million. That is, there are almost as many job openings as job seekers, a near match not seen for many years.

The reality is more complicated but still encouraging. A primary reason for unfilled jobs remains the problem of people with deficient or inappropriate skills. We know about the manufacturers who need welders and other skilled craftsmen. But the greatest job growth in March came in business services, with 193,000 openings. Many of these employers are looking for people with presentation skills or the ability to navigate a spreadsheet.

Donald Trump Ends the Obama Mirage By Matthew Continetti

Trump’s decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Iran nuclear deal struck a fatal blow against Obama’s foreign-policy legacy.

Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in the Washington Free Beacon.

President Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a.k.a. the Iran nuclear deal, on the afternoon of May 8. The deal, announced to such fanfare in July 2015, did not live to see its third birthday. And for that, I am grateful.

Why? Because the president said not only that America will be leaving the accord. He declared that the period of waxing Iranian influence in the Middle East is at an end. The deal financed several years of Iranian expansion through Shiite proxies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. By reimposing sanctions, President Trump will weaken an already ailing Iranian economy. The Iranian currency, the rial, has plummeted in recent weeks. Inflation is rampant. The financial system is corrupted, dysfunctional. Strikes are proliferating and often turn into displays against the government. This is a situation the United States should seek not to mitigate but to exacerbate.

Removing ourselves from the deal puts Iran on the defensive. Its people and government are divided and uncertain how to respond. Its leverage is minimal. Iranian citizens have seen their leaders use the money from the deal not to improve the economic lot of the average person but to fund the military, IRGC, and other instruments of foreign adventurism. Implicit in the deal was recognition of the Islamic regime as a legitimate member of the so-called international community. President Trump has rescinded that recognition and the standing that came with it. The issue is no longer Iranian compliance with an agreement that contained loopholes through which you could launch a Fateh-110 heavy missile. The issue is whether Iran chooses to become a responsible player or not, whether it curbs its imperial designs, cuts off its militias, abandons terrorism, opens its public square, and ceases its threats to and harassment of the United States and her allies. That choice is not Donald Trump’s to make. It is the Iranian regime’s.

Trump Dumps Iran Deal — Hallelujah! Andrew McCarthy *****

The Iran deal empowered the totalitarians. Trump’s exit squeezes them.

President 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.

NRA Names Oliver North Next President By Jack Crowe

Oliver North, the retired Marine lieutenant colonel convicted in connection with the Iran-Contra affair, has been named the next president of the National Rifle Association, the group announced Monday.

“This is the most exciting news for our members since Charlton Heston became president of our association,” NRA executive vice president and CEO Wayne LaPierre said in a statement, referencing the Second Amendment activist and actor, who famously said his guns could only be taken from his “cold, dead hands.”

“Oliver North is a legendary warrior for American freedom, a gifted communicator and skilled leader. In these times, I can think of no one better suited to serve as our president.”

North served as a National Security Council staff member under President Ronald Reagan and was investigated for his participation in the illegal sale of weapons to Iran in exchange for the release of Americans held hostage in Lebanon. North was convicted on multiple charges but the convictions were later reversed on appeal, and all charges were dismissed in 1991.

The decision comes amid heightened national scrutiny of the gun industry and a widespread push for significant gun-control reforms in the wake of the mass shooting in Parkland, Fla. that claimed 17 lives on Valentine’s Day.

Joseph Hertz British Chief Rabbi & Zionist 1872 – 1946

By lending his prestige and support to the Zionist cause Joseph Herman Hertz, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth, strengthened the movement among both his coreligionists and government officials. The start of his tenure as the spiritual leader of British Jewry began shortly before WWI and ended just after WWII.
Role in Balfour Declaration

Whilst many in the Orthodox world stood aloof from Zionism, Hertz was a robust champion of the cause. In answer to leaders of the organized community who were opposed, Hertz brought the prestige of his office to bear on the side of Zionism.

On May 28, 1917 he wrote a letter to The Times in which he rejected the notion that the recent attack in the newspaper on Zionism by Claude Montefiore of the Anglo-Jewish Association and David Alexander of the Board of Deputies reflected “the views held by Anglo-Jewry as a whole or by the Jewries of the overseas dominions.”

On October 6, 1917 the War Cabinet led by Prime Minister David Lloyd George decided to send out the ‎draft of a planned government statement about a Jewish homeland in Palestine to eight Jews—four anti-Zionists and four Zionists—for ‎comment.

Chief Rabbi Hertz, along with Lord Walter Rothschild and Zionist statesmen Nahum Sokolow and Chaim Weizmann all submitted supporting letters. ‎

Hertz was associated with the Mizrachi Orthodox stream of Zionism which saw the return of the Jewish people to Palestine as part of a Divine plan. In worldly affairs he criticized the British Government’s Mandatory policies as a reversal of the spirit of the Balfour Declaration.

A frequent visitor to Palestine, Hertz took part in the 1925 opening of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on Mount Scopus. He went on to serve on the university’s Board of Governors.