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The Empty Absurdity Of The Democrats’ Dangerous Foreign Policy part 2 Thomas McArdle

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/10/26/the-empty-absurdity-of-the-democrats-dangerous-foreign-policy-2/

Part 2 of 2

The next Democratic president is likely not only to neglect or ignore national security threats requiring military assertiveness; he or she will subordinate U.S. interests to the will of foreign political elites and use American military might to promote socialism abroad.

Foreign policy has not been a great focus of the Democrats running for president, but that doesn’t negate the party’s increasing radicalism on defense.

Despite continuing to post strong polling numbers, even as his edge begins to weaken, Joe Biden, as he shows his age and continues his gaffes, cannot be expected to take the nomination. But if he were to be elected, expectations that he would conduct foreign policy like Presidents Bill Clinton or Barack Obama are misguided.

While boasting in the CNN debate this month that he’s “spent thousands of hours in the Situation Room” in the White House, Biden as he pushes 80 would be dominated by a young crop of advisers, and considering the state of the Democratic Party’s base it would be a bad bet to imagine that the likes of relative moderates such as current Biden advisers Nicholas Burns and Tony Blinken would be able to hold sway.

But what does the most likely nominee right now, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, have in mind? During July’s CNN debate, she sent the unsettling signal that the U.S. “is not going to use nuclear weapons preemptively, and we need to say so to the entire world.” According to Warren, uncertainty about U.S. first use of a nuke “puts the entire world at risk and puts us at risk.”

Quite the contrary.

Warren Collapsing Our Nuclear Umbrella

It may shock many Americans to hear it, but, as Fred Kaplan, author of the forthcoming “The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War,” writer for Slate, and no conservative, recently pointed out, “from the dawn of the atomic age until now, U.S. policy has explicitly stated that we would use nuclear weapons first, if some crisis called for it … The threat of nuclear first-use — the assurance that we would risk New York for Paris, or Washington for London — lay at the heart of the U.S. security guarantee for the NATO alliance. It was — and still is — called ‘extended deterrence’ and the ‘nuclear umbrella.’”

This U.S. policy prevented nuclear war over the course of decades and restrained the expansionist Soviet Union until its collapse. As Kaplan put it with the plainest clarity, “you have to make adversaries believe you’d actually push the button, in order to keep them from getting too aggressive.” And as Kaplan further noted, “the Russian military now has a doctrine of using nuclear weapons first if NATO troops make incursions on Russian territory — mainly as a way of countering America’s supremacy in conventional arms.”

I’m from the Deep State and I’m here to help – by Arthur Chrenkoff *****

http://thedailychrenk.com/2019/10/23/im-deep-state-im-help/

It’s 2019, so it’s perhaps time to update Ronald Reagan’s famous dictum that “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

The media and the left (but I repeat myself) have spent the past three years ridiculing the concept of the “Deep State” and those who subscribe to its existence. We have been told it’s a crazy right-wing conspiracy theory to believe that some public servants, mostly in the fields of intelligence, law enforcement and diplomacy, might cooperate in informal cabals to pursue their preferred policies regardless of who is in power and to protect their fiefdoms from oversight, interference and the executive, legislative and judicial control. To wonder whether some influential people in the federal bureaucracy, connected through a revolving door with the progressive establishment, might have contemplated preventing the election of their bete noire and his removal from office once their initial efforts proved unsuccessful invited accusation of delusion and paranoia.

This narrative is now officially old and busted. The new and hot one: the Deep State exists and it’s good.

As Michelle Cottle, member of “The New York Times” editorial board, writes in her op-ed “They Are Not The Resistance. They Are Not a Cabal. They Are Public Servants: Let us now praise these not-silent heroes”:

President Trump is right: The deep state is alive and well. But it is not the sinister, antidemocratic cabal of his fever dreams. It is, rather, a collection of patriotic public servants — career diplomats, scientists, intelligence officers and others — who, from within the bowels of this corrupt and corrupting administration, have somehow remembered that their duty is to protect the interests, not of a particular leader, but of the American people.

Fiona Hill, Michael McKinley and the whistle-blower who effectively initiated the impeachment investigation — when these folks saw something suspicious, they said something. Their aim was not to bring down Mr. Trump out of personal or political animus but to rescue the Republic from his excesses. Those who refuse to silently indulge this president’s worst impulses qualify as heroes — and deserve our gratitude.

Throughout the Trump presidency, there has been a trickle of fed-up individuals willing to step up and protest the administration’s war on science, expertise and facts.

Is that what it is! Just patriotic public servants trying to save the people from a democratically elected President of their own country.

I’m from the Deep State and I’m here to help by Arthur Chrenkoff

http://thedailychrenk.com/2019/10/23/im-deep-state-im-help/

It’s 2019, so it’s perhaps time to update Ronald Reagan’s famous dictum that “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

The media and the left (but I repeat myself) have spent the past three years ridiculing the concept of the “Deep State” and those who subscribe to its existence. We have been told it’s a crazy right-wing conspiracy theory to believe that some public servants, mostly in the fields of intelligence, law enforcement and diplomacy, might cooperate in informal cabals to pursue their preferred policies regardless of who is in power and to protect their fiefdoms from oversight, interference and the executive, legislative and judicial control. To wonder whether some influential people in the federal bureaucracy, connected through a revolving door with the progressive establishment, might have contemplated preventing the election of their bete noire and his removal from office once their initial efforts proved unsuccessful invited accusation of delusion and paranoia.

This narrative is now officially old and busted. The new and hot one: the Deep State exists and it’s good.

As Michelle Cottle, member of “The New York Times” editorial board, writes in her op-ed “They Are Not The Resistance. They Are Not a Cabal. They Are Public Servants: Let us now praise these not-silent heroes”:

President Trump is right: The deep state is alive and well. But it is not the sinister, antidemocratic cabal of his fever dreams. It is, rather, a collection of patriotic public servants — career diplomats, scientists, intelligence officers and others — who, from within the bowels of this corrupt and corrupting administration, have somehow remembered that their duty is to protect the interests, not of a particular leader, but of the American people.

America Needs to Choose Sides: Saudi Arabia or Iran by Peter Huessy

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15046/saudi-arabia-iran

Senator Bernie Sanders failed to mention that the “catastrophic war” to which he was referring was initiated solely by the Iranian regime, which encouraged and enabled Houthi terrorists to overthrow the internationally recognized government of Yemen.

A key danger to the US also lies in its relinquishing the maritime chokepoint, Bab el-Mandeb, through which — along with the Strait of Hormuz — approximately one-third of the world’s oil production passes every day. Iran’s ability to disrupt or interdict this daily movement of oil would give Tehran enormous leverage over the global economy.

Given this reality, it is inexplicable for Congress to advocate a policy based on tying the hands of Saudi Arabia, an ally, while giving free rein to Iran, which has been a sworn enemy of the US for decades. In addition, Saudi Arabia, unlike Iran, is not on any glide-path to producing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to deliver them.

Many of the US administration’s critics in Congress are, perhaps unsurprisingly, exhibiting hypocrisy where American policy is concerned. Less than a year ago, the Senate passed a resolution, co-sponsored by Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Mike Lee (R-UT) and Chris Murphy (D-CT), to discontinue military support for the Saudi-led effort to defeat the Houthis — Marxist-Islamist terrorists backed by, and serving as, a proxy to the Iranian regime in its war in Yemen.

Sanders defended the resolution by declaring: “The bottom line is that the United States should not be supporting a catastrophic war led by a despotic [Saudi] regime with an irresponsible foreign policy.”

Sanders failed to mention that the “catastrophic war” to which he was referring was initiated solely by the regime in Tehran, which encouraged and enabled Houthi terrorists to overthrow the internationally recognized government of Yemen. These terrorists continue to use hospitals and schools in Yemen as troop barracks and supply dumps, and dragoon pre-pubescent children into their ranks.

Bernie’s Big, Bolshie, Biden-Boosting Bash By Kyle Smith

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/bernie-sanders-queens-rally-circus-comes-to-town/

The Sanders circus comes to Queens.

Who says Joe Biden supporters aren’t fired up and ready to fight? Twenty-five thousand eight hundred and seventy-two of them showed up in Queens Saturday to bring a smile to Uncle Joe’s lips. All of them were fighting to split the socialist vote that threatens Biden between the relatively spry lady who could actually win (Elizabeth Warren) and the wild-haired 78-year-old Larry David impersonator who just had a heart attack (Bernie Sanders).

The weekend timing was unfortunate given Bernie’s precarious health and even more precarious standing in the polls. (Nine percent in Iowa, behind Pete Buttigieg? Really? Was he even born when Bernie ran in 2016?) You would think the Bernie Sanders campaign would make sure to hold its biggest rallies on a weekday, given the amount of propping up he needs. Hunched over from the shoulders, he didn’t just grab the lectern on Saturday — he clutched it, relied on it, looking like Mr. Burns leaning over his walker. (It’s a good thing he’s a politician; in what other profession do they invariably put a large stand in front of you to help you keep your balance?) Sanders came on stage to the strains of AC/DC’s “Back in Black,” which was meant to make Sanders sound exciting and indomitable; in fact the song was written as a tribute to a dead guy (Bon Scott). Oopsie?

Sanders’s speech was characteristically Sandernista stuff: Droning, badgering, meandering, enervating, needlessly, endlessly long. Sanders is the kind of guy who could promise every American free Netflix for life and still make it sound like a shut-up-and-take-your-medicine speech. The man is pure Castro oil. As his brillo-pad-on-sandpaper voice flayed the eardrums, the Bernie signs drooped. Even his most ardent fans looked at each other like they were ankle-deep in a bear trap. Whether Sanders was being uselessly vague (“Our legislation. Will hold. The fossil-fuel industry. Accountable.”) or issuing absurdly unrealistic blue-sky promises (“Our program will eliminate homelessness in America!”), he sounded completely irrelevant to 2019. Five years older than the oldest Baby Boomer, already ten years past the average life expectancy of a man born in 1941, he is not the man to lead America through the 2020s. He’s the man at the deli who wants his tuna-on-rye special Retoasted, the right way this time.

Why Do They Hate Him So? Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/20/why-do-they-hate-him-so/

Democrats, NeverTrump Republicans, left-liberal celebrities, journalists, and academics all revile Donald Trump because he is trying and often succeeding to restore a conservative America at a time when his opponents thought that the mere idea was not just impossible but unhinged.

Joe Biden claims he wants to take Trump behind the gym and beat him up.

Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) jokes that she would like to go into an elevator with him and see Trump never come out alive. Robert De Niro has exhausted the ways in which he dreams of punching Trump out and the intonations in which he yells to audiences, “F—k Trump!”

The humanists and social justice warriors of Hollywood, from Madonna to Johnny Depp, cannot agree whether their elected president should be beheaded, blown up, stabbed, shot, or incinerated. All the Democratic would-be presidential nominees agree that Trump is the worst something-or-other in history—from human being to mere president.

Former subordinates like Anthony Scaramucci, Omarosa, and Michael Cohen insist that he is a racist, a sexist, a crook, a bully, or mentally deranged—and they all support their firsthand appraisals on the basis they eagerly worked for him and were unceremoniously fired by him.

The so-called deep state detests him. An anonymous op-ed writer in the September 5, 2018 New York Times bragged about the bureaucracy’s successful efforts to ignore Trump’s legal mandates—a sort of more methodical version of the comical Rosenstein-McCabe attempt to stage a palace coup and remove Trump, or the Democrats efforts to invoke the 25th Amendment and declare Trump crazy, bolstered by an array of Ivy League psychiatrists who had neither met nor examined him.

Warren’s charmed campaign just entered a brutal new phase Tuesday night’s debate pile-on made clear that things are about to get rough for the new front-runner. by Ryan Lizza

https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/16/elizabeth-warren-debate-048163

Elizabeth Warren has enjoyed many of the trappings of a front-runner: the polling lead in Iowa and New Hampshire, a near-tie with Joe Biden nationally, explosive fundraising, big crowds. The only thing missing was the scrutiny and sniping from competitors that normally accompanies the rise of a new primary leader.

That changed on Tuesday night at Otterbein University, a small college outside Columbus, Ohio. Otterbein was named after the founder of the United Brethren in Christ, but the mood was anything but brotherly as Warren faced a barrage of criticisms from most of the other 11 Democrats on stage.

The candidate who brags about having a plan for everything was pilloried for not detailing how she would pay for her most expensive proposal. She was accused — sometimes subtly, sometimes explicitly — of being naive, dishonest, not adequately respecting her colleagues’ ideas, tearing people down, and failing to enact major legislation. She was attacked for believing in policies that were “punitive” and a theory of governing that was a “pipe dream.”

Warren’s biggest gains have come since the last debate, so Tuesday’s debate was the natural point for a more full-throated engagement from the other candidates. Until now, three elements central to Warren’s candidacy have received relatively little pressure from her opponents as she has slowly ticked up in the polls.

Trump comes out swinging By J.R. Dunn

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/10/trump_comes_out_swinging.html

As he did Thursday night in Minnesota, President Trump came out swinging in Lake Charles, Louisiana on Friday.

“The Democrats’ policies are crazy, their politicians are corrupt, their candidates are terrible, and they know they can’t win on election day, so they’re pursuing an illegal, invalid, and unconstitutional bullsh*t impeachment.”

The President was ostensibly in town to support two Republican candidates running in a typically oddball Louisiana gubernatorial election featuring Republicans U.S. Rep. Ralph Abraham and businessman Eddie Rispone against incumbent Democrat John Bel Edwards. But in truth it was Donald Trump vs. the political establishment, the media, and the Deep State.

“This is the witch hunt,” Trump said. “They’ve been trying to stop us for three years with a lot of crap.”

“All of our nation’s gains are put at risk by a rage-filled Democrat party that has gone completely insane. The Democrats are fighting to restore the wretched political class that… surrendered our sovereignty, flooded our cities with drugs and crimes and bogged us down in one foreign war after another.”

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren had been raked over the coals on Thursday. Last night it was Nancy Pelosi’s turn.

“I used to think she loved the country. She hates the country. Nancy Pelosi hates the United States of America, because she wouldn’t be doing this.”

Joe Biden, not to forget Hunter, also came in for a beating: “Can you imagine if Don Jr. or Eric Trump, or if our beautiful Ivanka… if they walked out with $1.5 billion? They would be saying, ‘Where’s the nearest cell?’”

The Greatness of Donald Trump By Dov Fischer

https://spectator.org/the-greatness-of-donald-trump/?utm

His demeanor makes some of us wince. His language makes many of us uncomfortable. Presidents in democracies reflect something about the people who elect them. In some cases, as with the aptly named House of Representatives, people sometimes even vote to be reflected by an assortment of lowlifes. Ilhan Omar reflects her district, as does Rashida Tlaib, as does [O-] Cortez. Hillary lost because even Democrats were revulsed by the thought that she reflects them.

Trump, too, reflects his electorate: we who put him there. In balancing all that he comprises, we focused in November 2016 on greatness. Eight years of Obama — incompetence, weakness, economic malaise, societal decay — left us focused on restoring greatness. Thus, even Christian pastors, devout Catholic theologians, and Orthodox rabbis vigorously support Donald Trump. The free world’s last great hope is America, and she was in peril.

What about his language, some of his dishonorable private deeds, flaws in his character?

Yes, excellence of personal character is desirable. A Mike Huckabee, a Mike Pence might offer an interesting successor model in 2024 after the Democrats manage to impeach Trump into an impeccable second full term. Yet we will look back on Trump’s presidency wistfully decades hence as we today look back on the Ronald Reagan years. The man, whatever his flaws, has proven to be a great president of historic dimensions.

Those who complain about Trump’s character invariably are the same “deplorables” who voted for the lying, cheating, false-faced Hillary. They had no problem with an ethical deviant who had committed felonious spoliation of evidence, lied about her emails (yoga and wedding dresses?), lied about Benghazi (an incoherent YouTube video with few views?), lied about her very name (named for a guy who became famous only after she was born?), lied about her trips abroad (landing amid gunfire in Bosnia, when in fact she was greeted by schoolgirls presenting her flowers), lying about and defaming the women whom her husband sexually assaulted, even lying and joking in a fake Southern drawl (back when her husband was Arkansas governor) about successfully defending a guy who raped a 12-year-old girl. They likewise had no compunction voting for her better half despite his raping Juanita Broaddrick, assaulting Kathleen Willey, exposing himself to Paula Corbin Jones, manipulating a gullible Monica Lewinsky — later explaining, “because I could.”

Why Foreign Influence Is on the Rise Corrupt officials and ‘princelings’ grow more important in our globalized politics. By Walter Russell Mead

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-foreign-influence-is-on-the-rise-11569885340

“Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence,” George Washington warned in his Farewell Address, “the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government.” Those words have rarely seemed more relevant than now, when both the president and the front-runner for the nomination to challenge him are embroiled in a scandal that began with attempts by Ukrainian figures to manipulate Washington politics and policy.

The Ukrainian firestorm is only the start. America and the world are changing in ways that will make the question of foreign influence in U.S. political life more fateful, and more difficult to police, than ever.

This isn’t about Facebook ads and voting machines. It is not even about more blatant forms of foreign meddling, like the alleged Russian leaks of damaging information stolen from the Democratic National Committee. Serious as these problems are, America’s greatest risk isn’t the vulnerability of its voting machines to foreign hackers or the susceptibility of party apparatchiks to phishing scams. It is the erosion of ethical standards in the American political and business establishments that most exposes the U.S. to the kind of foreign interference against which Washington warned.

This isn’t a partisan problem. Some members of the administration, including the tweeter in chief, have behaved in ways that earlier American presidents would have condemned, but they are hardly alone. The Clinton Foundation was perceived by many of its foreign donors to be a way to influence American politics during the years in which Hillary Clinton was a likely future president. And hardly anyone believes it was Hunter Biden’s experience, sagacity and business acumen that commended him as a candidate for board membership to a beleaguered Ukrainian gas company.