RUTHFULLY YOURS

Maryland’s Barbara Mikulski on Wednesday became the 34th Senate Democrat to announce her support for President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, enough to sustain a veto on a resolution of disapproval. So the deal will proceed, and Democrats had better hope it succeeds because they are taking responsibility for Iran’s compliance and imperial ambitions. Politically speaking, they now own the Ayatollahs.

The Democratic co-owners include Vice President Joe Biden, presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton and nearly every member of the Congressional leadership. While New York Senator Chuck Schumer came out early against the deal, he has done nothing publicly to rally opponents. His silence suggests he has long known Mr. Obama would have enough votes to prevail.

Democrats will reinforce their ownership if they now use a Senate filibuster to block a vote on the motion of disapproval. More than 50 Senators are expected to oppose the deal, and a large bipartisan majority will oppose it in the House. Yet the White House is pushing for 41 Senate Democrats to enforce a filibuster, so that a bipartisan motion of disapproval dies in the Senate and Mr. Obama wouldn’t have to veto.

1. Hungarian TV “told not to broadcast images of refugee children”2. Norwegian bank apologizes for issuing anti-Semitic credit card3. Spanish broadcaster removes “Jewish Satanism” show from its website4. Swiss Foreign Ministry says sorry for cartoon of birds defecating on Netanyahu5. Luxembourg’s biggest supermarket chain stops selling Israeli products6. Chinese conglomerate ignores BDS protests, buys majority stake in Ahava7. Two injured as Jewish football team attacked in Berlin8. Man arrested for attack on Paris synagogue9. Visitors complain about “cool down” showers at Auschwitz10. Prince Albert of Monaco apologizes for his country’s deportation of Jews11. Jewish cafe re-opens in Shanghai12. Labour’s Corbyn criticized for supporting Palestinians who bombed Jewish charity13. Iran bars Daniel Barenboim from concert over Israeli citizenship14. ISIS-affiliated terrorists fire rocket at Israel but hit Gaza

Good morning and welcome to another Winning With Women Wednesday. Last week we interviewed, Charles (Chuck) Brooks who currently serves as the Vice President for Government Relations & Marketing for Sutherland Global Services. Chuck leads Federal, State & Local Government relations activities. He is also an Advisor to the Bill and Melinda Gates Technology Partner network and serves on the boards of several prominent public and private companies and organizations. Chuck has extensive service in Senior Executive Management, Marketing, Government Relations, and Business Development and worked in those capacities for three large public corporations.

After four years of devastating civil war with more than 240,000 dead — some from government use of chemical weapons and some from government- induced starvation — Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad has admitted he has a manpower problem. In fact, he has a bigger problem than that.

Assad’s Russian and Iranian sponsors know that his grip on Syria is far from secure. The Islamic State group has expanded its territory in the north, and fighting in the suburbs of Damascus could trigger a collapse of the regime if one major breakthrough occurs. Thus the Syrian government has turned to brutalbombings of civilians and other measures to try to stave off what is looking more and more inevitable.

The situation could deteriorate further, and Assad may use even more desperate methods if he can find them.

Stratfor’s George Friedman published an interesting article on September 1, “ Pondering Hitler’s Legacy,” to mark the 76th anniversary of the beginning of World War II. The first outcome of Hitler’s war, he says, was that it destroyed Europe’s hegemony over much of the world and its influence over the rest:

Within 15 years of the end of the war, Britain, France, Belgium and the Netherlands lost their empires . . . By the end of the war they had lost the will, the energy and the wealth to maintain their power. After half-hearted and doomed attempts to resist, these countries willingly participated in the dismantling of what they had once thought of as their birthright . . . After the war, Europe faced the task of rebuilding buildings. The ambition to rule had been exhausted.

This assertion is disputable. The dusk of European hegemony started in the aftermath of the First World War. The wealth was largely gone by 1918. A financially crippled Britain abandoned the gold standard in 1931. France was even more severely damaged: the ravages of war on her soil exceeded 100 percent of her 1913 GDP; the national debt rose from 66% of GDP in 1913 to 170% in 1919. High inflation caused the franc to lose half its value against the British pound.

After mosquitoes, chiggers, ticks, fleas, flies and other tiny disease-carrying insects that seem to exist solely to cause human misery and pain and which are otherwise expendable, the cicada is the next most useless creature in the animal kingdom. Ants and worms aerate the soil. Bees distribute pollen.

The cicada, however, does nothing. It doesn’t even transmit a disease. It’s also so ugly it resembles an alien life form. I’m surprised that no independent film producer has shot and released “The Attack of the Flesh-Eating Cicadas From Planet Xylophone.” It’s noisy. The mating call of the American cicada, as anyone who has ever heard one (or a forest full of cicadas) can testify, is a shrill, high-pitched, compressed clicking similar to the sound of a car’s gears being stripped. Or a DVD player spinning its wheels. Or a badly designed alarm clock. It can outshout the mating call of a tree frog.

I’d rather listen to a forest full of crickets. That can be deafening, too, but at least I know the crickets are not coming after me.

Basically, the cicada provides an “ecological” service to everyone and everything by just dying. It is basically a parasite. It doesn’t even feed on other parasites. Like the equally useless bagworm, It sucks on tree fluids, becomes an adult, reproduces, and dies. It is only good for being mulched in soil after it dies, or being consumed by ants and other insects, and by squirrels, birds, and other animals when they’re desperate.

All the websites on the cicada say that it is a nutrient-rich delicacy. There are actually cicada recipes. No, thank you. I have a hard time picturing people chowing down on chocolate-covered ants and snails.

One can’t say about the cultural cicadas that make a lot of noise on Netflix that they’re “nutrient-rich.” These movies and TV series are not nutrient-rich – at least not for one’s souls – and are otherwise useless as esthetic and/or moral experiences. They are not produced for “uplift.” They do not provide what novelist Ayn Rand called “emotional fuel” for one to pursue one’s values. They are a hybrid cicada, and can burrow into one’s mind and soul to lay eggs. They are produced, consciously or unconsciously, to inculcate an enervating epistemological and metaphysical drone that life is pointless, that happiness is random and arbitrary, and that existence is just one long sentence of spiritually eviscerating numbness with no chance of relief or commutation.

Here is how the pro-Israel theater works.

Every other country has its American embassy in its capital. Except Israel. Every few years, Congress would bring up a bill or a resolution calling or even mandating that the embassy be moved to Jerusalem. Even politicians not known for their great love of the Jewish State would vote for it.

Some like Biden or Kerry would even sponsor them.

The bill would have a loophole allowing a president to waive it in the interests of national security, which he always did, even when he had promised to move the embassy to Jerusalem in his campaign.

The politicians were happy. The pro-Israel lobby got to justify its budget. Some Jews however were baffled why the embassy never seemed to get moved.

Senator Casey has just announced his support for the Iran Nuclear Deal.

Here are quotes from his Senate office Issues: “Senator Casey has supported the continued use of economic and diplomatic pressure to impel Iranian regime to halt its pursuit of a nuclear weapon. For example, Senator Casey co-sponsored the Iran Freedom and Counter-Proliferation Act of 2012. This amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act enhances sanctions imposed with respect to Iran. The act increases sanctions on the Iranian energy sector as well as its port, shipping, and shipbuilding sectors. It also places new restrictions on Iran’s ability to get insurance for these industries. In December 2012, Senator Casey joined Senators Menendez of New Jersey, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and 70 other Senators in sending a letter to President Obama regarding Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The letter expresses the urgency in addressing the security threat posed by Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons capability. It also calls on the Obama administration to fully implement all existing sanctions and to adopt new, stronger sanctions.”

Support for Israel
Israel is one of the United States’ most trusted allies. A stable and secure Israel is in our national security interest and has been a cornerstone of our foreign policy for more than half a century. The United States benefits enormously from cooperating with Israel on counter terrorism, intelligence and defense. Israel has shared innovative technology and equipment with the U.S. military, helping to protect our service members in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. . In April 2013, Senator Casey visited Israel where he met with President Peres and Prime Minister Netanyahu to discuss security issues facing our countries, including Iran’s nuclear program and unrest throughout the Middle East.

Obama claimed that ISIS was only a “jayvee” team even as it was capturing Iraqi cities. Now he wants us to believe that Iran is just another “jayvee” team even as it’s taking over Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

Like the rest of his Iran deal talking points, the one about Iran’s tiny military budget is false, and not only is it false, but his claim about how small Iran’s military budget keeps changing.

A few weeks ago, in a speech at American University, he was claiming that “The defense budget of the United States is more than $600 billion. To repeat, Iran’s is about $15 billion.”

“Iran’s defense budget is $30 billion. Our defense budget is closer to $600 billion. Iran understands that they cannot fight us,” Obama had told the New York Times in April.

Just now, he told the Forward, “As I pointed out repeatedly, Iran’s annual defense budget is about $15 billion.”

What is Iran’s military budget? Read Obama’s lips. It’s either $15 billion or $30 billion.

I am so sick and tired of pundits explaining what we can “learn” from Donald Trump. Do they not listen to Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Carly Fiorina to channel anger properly. Peter Wood explains this free floating anger in his very prescient book:” A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America Now” Jan 4, 2007

Donald Trump is the angry man of the hour. He joins a long list of people who in the last half century have made their mark by bursting the confines of civility to say aggressively rude and obnoxious things. Vein-popping, vitriolic anger displayed in public is an art form — of sorts. It is a performance art, and it is a new thing — new, at least, in the yardstick of lifetimes and centuries. Donald Trump’s antics would have been unthinkable in the era of Eisenhower, let alone FDR.

It was not that people in such past generations didn’t get angry, didn’t sometimes express their anger in awkward ways, or didn’t sometimes become publicly known for their bluster. We’ve had our Huey Long–style politicians who have made pyrotechnic anger their trademark. But beginning in the aftermath of World War II, the nation began a transition from believing that an easy or too frequent resort to anger is a weakness to a belief that anger is empowering and that expressing it vigorously is healthy and good.

The shift from self-control to self-expression didn’t happen all at once, and at first it was confined to artists, writers, and intellectuals. Think of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl (1955) as one of the early expressions of self-actualizing rage. But Ginsberg was howling in a beat dive in San Francisco. How did we get from there to Mr. Trump howling on stage?