RUTHFULLY YOURS

WASHINGTON—The Trump administration is proposing deep cuts in U.S. diplomatic and foreign-aid funding while dramatically increasing defense expenditures, a bid to fundamentally shift the emphasis of U.S. foreign policy that has sparked fierce criticism from lawmakers and international-affairs experts.

The White House has proposed a spending cut of 37% to the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development budget said a person familiar with the budget deliberations. Those agencies now receive about $50.1 billion.

At the same time, President Donald Trump is developing a federal budget that officials said would add $54 billion to the base defense budget, funded by cuts elsewhere, including the State Department and its foreign-aid division. The addition would increase military spending to more than $600 billion.

Lawmakers opposed to the cuts say they will unavoidably devastate the State Department. People familiar with the deliberations said the Trump administration is examining the growth in spending by the State Department during the Obama administration, including through the addition of adding special envoys, they said, though that would not cover the proposed cuts.

One U.S. official said that the Trump administration also was eyeing U.S. development assistance to other countries as a significant source for the cuts.

Word of the proposed cuts met with swift objection from Republicans and Democrats, who said it would sharply curtail Washington’s ability to guide world events.

“That is definitely dead on arrival,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on state and foreign operations, told reporters Tuesday. He said the proposed budget “destroys soft power” and puts diplomats at risk.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said he didn’t believe that a 37% cut would make it through Congress. “The diplomatic portion of the federal budget is very important and you get results a lot cheaper frequently,” than through military spending, he said.

Sen. Ben Cardin (D., Md.), the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said cutting the State Department budget by more than a third would “have serious and detrimental effects on our national-security posture.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-navy-choice-1488317240

President Trump’s nominee for Secretary of the Navy, investor Philip Bilden, withdrew Sunday over difficulties separating himself from his business interests. This follows the withdrawal of Army nominee Vincent Viola, but the Navy job carries particular significance because the new Administration has promised a major naval buildup.

The last great U.S. Navy Secretary was John Lehman, who used a background in finance and a natural talent for bureaucratic warfare to enact Ronald Reagan’s vision of a 600-ship Navy and help drive the Soviet Union to exhaustion. Today, as the Navy and its industry contractors try to halt a string of acquisitions snafus involving aircraft carriers, surface combatants and fighter aircraft, a veteran businessman such as former Ford CEO Alan Mulally would be a strong choice.

The more obvious pick is former Congressman Randy Forbes. As chair of the House Armed Services subcommittees on readiness and seapower from 2011 through last year, he warned that the Navy is undersized and ill-equipped to address security challenges such as China’s emergence as a rival in the Pacific. Mr. Forbes helped conceive the goal of a 350-ship Navy embraced by Mr. Trump—today’s fleet is 273 deployable ships—and last year he led his House committee in passing a $20.6 billion shipbuilding budget, the largest since the Reagan-Lehman era.

Our sources say Mr. Forbes has backers at the White House, but Pentagon chief Jim Mattis may prefer a nonpolitician. Mr. Mattis shouldn’t hire anyone who doesn’t have his confidence, but many former politicians have served ably as service secretaries. Mr. Forbes has a record of subordinating political considerations to strategic ones, as when he backed the deployment of more U.S. Navy assets to Asia that otherwise could have been based in his home state of Virginia.

Reversing the U.S. Navy’s decline is an urgent strategic priority. A smart service secretary who can navigate the Pentagon bureaucracy and Congressional opponents will be an asset to Mr. Trump, and the country, in pursuing the 350-ship goal. CONTINUE AT SITE

Turns out the last full quarter of the Obama economy was just as lousy as we thought. This morning the government reported that GDP grew at the same sluggish 1.9% rate in the fourth quarter as previously estimated. Business investment was even worse than expected, and this news comes on the heels of Monday’s disappointing report on durable goods orders for January. This raises the hope that at least we won’t have to hear any more about the allegedly beautiful economy that President Obama has bequeathed to his successor. But it underlines the need for President Trump to show tonight that he’s going to deliver on his promises of economic growth.

Markets have been on a tear since Election Night, with the Dow up nearly 14% through Tuesday’s close. This is based on Mr. Trump’s promises to reduce the burden of taxes and rules imposed by Washington. For years prior to his election, markets were rising thanks in large part to historically low interest rates engineered by the Federal Reserve. But investors and businesspeople didn’t really believe Washington could manufacture prosperity. So big companies borrowed at low rates and then used the money to buy other companies or buy back their own stock or just sat on cash instead of investing in new equipment. This lack of investment meant we never got the productivity gains that make us all richer. Mr. Trump has made business operators more optimistic but it’s not clear he’s yet changed their behavior.

When he addresses a Joint Session of Congress tonight, job creators need to see Mr. Trump’s best-ever reality show—a plan to move from the unreality of Washington economic management to a real market where stocks rise because of robust growth in sales and profits. CONTINUE AT SITE

The call from the Left is to “resist” a “Fascist America,” which is supposedly the direction the United States is taking under President Trump. Among other things, leftists regularly accuse President Trump and members of his administration of anti-Semitism. Yet one of the leaders of the “resistance” movement, and a co-organizer of the next women’s protest on March 8th is Rasmea Yousef Odeh, a convicted Palestinian terrorist. Odeh had participated in bombings in Israel nearly 50 years ago, one of which resulted in the killing of two Israeli students. Now she is advocating militant resistance in the streets of the United States. For Palestinians, “resistance” is often used as a rationalization for acts of terrorism. Odeh has not explicitly advocated the use of violence – at least not yet. However, Odeh and her co-organizers have called for the March 8th protest to include blocking roads, bridges, and squares. We have seen such uncivil acts of disobedience lead to violence in the past.

Odeh has joined with several other militants as co-authors of a manifesto for a new, more radical form of feminism. Odeh’s co-authors include Angela Davis, who supported the Black Panthers and was a former leader of the Communist Party USA, and Tithi Bhattacharya, a Maoist supporter. The manifesto heralded what its authors called an international “anti-capitalist” feminist movement that is “at once anti-racist, anti-imperialist, anti-heterosexist and anti-neoliberal.” So-called “lean-in” or “other variants of corporate feminism” are not “feminism for the 99%,” according to the manifesto’s co-authors.

Move over, Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren. Leftists have found new radical feminist heroines to embrace. According to Workers’ World, “Progressive women in the U.S. eagerly responded to the call. Posted on womenstrikeus.org is the strike platform: ‘In a spirit of solidarity and internationalism, in the United States, March 8 will be a day of action organized by and for women who have been marginalized and silenced by decades of neoliberalism directed toward working women, women of color, Native women, disabled women, immigrant women, Muslim women, lesbian, queer and trans women. … [We are organizing] resistance not just against Trump and his misogynist policies, but also against the conditions that produced Trump, namely the decades-long economic inequality, racial and sexual violence, and imperial wars abroad.’” In other words, a whole potpourri of favorite leftwing causes.

Rasmea Yousef Odeh is particularly beloved in Muslim and leftwing circles. “She’s an icon, actually, across the country amongst Arab and Muslim organizations, around civil liberties organizations, among women’s empowerment organizations,” said Hatem Abudayyeh, a member of Chicago’s Arab-American community where Odeh was active as an organizer.

Angela Davis participated in an event in 2015 with Odeh, co-organized by the Chicago chapter of Black Lives Matter, entitled “Freedom Beyond Occupation & Incarceration – An Afternoon with Angela Davis and Rasmea Odeh.” According to a report in Ebony, “Davis and Odeh discussed the importance of Black-Palestinian solidarity, political imprisonment in the US and Israel, as well as the need for the abolition of prisons and ending the Israeli occupation of Palestine.”

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/02/guess_which_important_person_got_the_middle_finger_at_fashion_week.html

Apparently, it is Fashion Week, and Julie Tong relates that “Italian favorites from Gucci to Prada filled their collections with opulent color, excess, and maximalist style. While at Versace, powerful words like ‘unity,’ ‘courage,’ and ‘love’ were emblazoned on hats and sleeves and more.”

And, of course, “we can’t forget New York Fashion Week’s highly anticipated Raf Simons runway debut at Calvin Klein or the plethora of body-positive movements and political statements that took center stage on the runways.”

Those “political statements” included constant rebukes of President Trump in the Ashish shirt that nods to Trump’s comments in a leaked Access Hollywood tape, in which he boasted that a rich celebrity can “grab” enthusiastic women enamored of his wealth and status.

Then there was Prabal Gurung, whose shirt read “3 Million,” referencing “the number by which Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, despite President Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud.”

Not to be outdone, “[d]esigners Ramon Martin and Ryan Lobo pose with models from their show wearing Women’s March and Planned Parenthood T-shirts. On the runway, models wore Planned Parenthood pins.”

But I thought I would save the best for last: “aside from all the memorable moments and prettiest dresses, we want to make sure you are equally caught up on all the best shoes spotted on the catwalk thus far.”

One of the “best shoes” on display is called the “Jesus Printed Knee-High Boots, Jeremy Scott, Fall/Winter 2017.”

Would the fashion world depict the picture of Mohammad on a pair of boots? Would they make a statement about the lack of color worn by women in the Muslim world, whose native costumes have all but disappeared as they suffer under the lash of sharia law and dress codes?

Will the Christian world erupt with furious rage and start burning things? Or was I confusing that rage with visual depictions of another religion’s icon?

Just asking.

Jesus Printed Knee-High Boots, Jeremy Scott Fall/Winter 2017 Photo: ImaxTree