RUTHFULLY YOURS

In 1939, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier warned Adolf Hitler that if the Third Reich invaded Poland, a European war would follow.

Both leaders insisted that they meant it. But Hitler thought that after getting away with militarizing the Rhineland, annexing Austria, and dismantling Czechoslovakia, the Allied appeasers were once again just bluffing.

England and France declared war two days after Hitler entered Poland.

Once hard-won deterrence is lost, it is almost impossible to restore credibility without terrible costs and danger.

Last week, Russian officials warned the Obama administration about the installation of a new anti-ballistic missile system in Romania and talked of a possible nuclear confrontation that would reduce the host country to “smoking ruins” and “neutralize” any American-sponsored missile system.

Such apocalyptic rhetoric follows months of Russian bullying of nearby neutral Sweden, harassment of U.S. ships and planes, warnings to NATO nations in Europe, and constant threats to the Baltic states and former Soviet republics.

China just warned the U.S. to keep its ships and planes away from its new artificial island and military base in the Spratly archipelago — plopped down in the middle of the South China Sea to control international sea lanes.

Technically speaking though, it’s her husband’s terrible North Korean strategy. Obama used it to help Iran get billions while letting it steam ahead to the bomb. Now Hillary will call it Obama’s strategy so no one remembers how badly her husband botched North Korea.

One of Hillary Clinton’s top priorities as president would be to use sanctions to pressure North Korea to negotiate limits on its nuclear program, according to Clinton’s top foreign policy adviser. The strategy would mimic the Obama administration’s approach to Iran.

Except North Korea already has nukes. Thanks to Bill Clinton. At least the Obamanoids can still claim that Iran won’t get the bomb because it hasn’t officially test donated. North Korea has.

Jake Sullivan, the head of the Clinton campaign’s foreign policy advisory team, was one of two officials who began secret negotiations with Iran in 2012 that eventually resulted in the nuclear agreement that Iran struck last summer with six world powers. He told an audience Monday evening at the Asia Society in New York that Clinton is planning a similar strategy to deal with North Korea’s nuclear program.

If you loved how well Hillary Clinton dealt with Russia and Iran, just wait till you see how she does with North Korea. I assume D.C. will be nuked during her reelection campaign.

“Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.”

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)

A blank Word document stares out from the computer screen. An individual sits before it – the essayist at work? Not really. No one sits down to write without some idea – perhaps muddled – of what they want to say. A working title is affixed, along with a date that often proves to be optimistic, and a rubric is sometimes added. The latter adds wit and helps focus wandering minds. The concept, at this early stage, assumes the shape of a globule of mercury or a tube of Silly Putty. Sculpting tangled ideas into something concise and readable requires choosing the right words, having them mean what they were meant to mean. Essayists don’t have the latitude of Humpty Dumpty. In Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll has Mr. Dumpty say to Alice, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”

We writers of essays don’t want to leave readers puzzled like Alice, so we must be clear in what we write. Obfuscation is the province of politicians, not essayists. The purpose of the latter is to make thoughts intelligible, as they get transported from mind to paper. (The former operate in the hope that they will appeal to those who read carelessly and listen inattentively.)

Periods, colons, semi-colons, commas, dashes and parentheses are not there to look pretty, but to add clarity to what is written. Even the lowly apostrophe is defended by the Apostrophe Protection Society! Lynne Truss wrote in Eats, Shoots & Leaves, that punctuation is “the basting that holds the fabric of language in shape.” Edward Estlin Cummings, better known as e e cummings, chose to write poetry in lower case letters and without punctuation. He was an artist. We are mechanics, not dilettantish virtuosos who obscure the meaning of what they write. We are more like photographers than contemporary artists. The meaning of what we write should be clear, not left to the reader’s interpretation.

http://jamieglazov.com/2016/05/17/michael-cutler-moment-obamas-pathway-to-the-borderless-world/This special edition of The Glazov Gang presents The Michael Cutler Moment with Michael Cutler, a former Senior INS Special Agent.

Mr. Cutler discussed Obama’s Pathway to the “Borderless World,”unveiling how the Radical-in-Chief is opening America to Islamic terrorists and transnational criminals.

Don’t miss it!http://jamieglazov.com/2016/05/17/michael-cutler-moment-obamas-pathway-to-the-borderless-world/

The high dudgeon of the Never Trumpsters is so ridiculous. The best they can offer is a sad list of also rans who lost. Do conservatives really want to subvert the popular, democratically chosen candidate when the mother of political evils is the other choice? Puleez! I like and respect Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse. He has a great future in the GOP? Why squander resources on a quixotic quest when he has so much to bring to the Senate?

Andy McCarthy and Roger Kimball are among some conservatives whose disdain for Trump was known. They have both come around to conceding that Hillary Clinton is worse. …Far worse…..rsk

The Wall Street Journal has a remarkable story this week, entitled as follows:”Kerry Tries to Drum Up Some Business in Europe for Iran.”

Mr. Kerry, traveling in Europe, was urging European firms to do business with Iran in the aftermath of last year’s nuclear deal. The story continues:

“If they don’t see a good business deal, they shouldn’t say, ‘Oh, we can’t do it because of the United States.’ That’s just not fair. That’s not accurate,” Mr. Kerry said. The secretary is here through Thursday for an anticorruption summit and diplomatic meetings. He will meet with European banking leaders to “address their concerns about conducting business with Iran” after the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, a U.S. official said. In New York last month, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif pressed Mr. Kerry and other U.S. officials to do more to reassure other countries that they could do business with Iran without penalty. “Iran has a right to the benefits of the agreement they signed up to and if people, by confusion or misinterpretation or in some cases disinformation, are being misled, it’s appropriate for us to try to clarify that….”

Iran is the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism. It continues to rally its population with shouts of “Death to America.” It supports Hezbollah, a murderous terrorist group with the blood of hundreds of Americans on its hands. It has a nuclear weapons program that has been delayed, one hopes, by the nuclear deal–but continues its ballistic missile program, whose only logical purpose is to deliver nuclear weapons. It is an enemy of American allies such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Israel.

Why, then, is our Secretary of State trying to assist its economy? The so-called “spirit” of the nuclear agreement? There is no such thing, or Iran would not have captured and abused American sailors in the Gulf in January. Iran’s “rights” to benefits from the agreement? That is nonsense. Iran has the “right” to an end to nuclear sanctions, but has no “right” to additional business. There are many reasons companies may hold back, ranging from American terrorism and human rights sanctions, to uncertainty about future American policy, to fear that entities in Iran with which they may undertake business are also involved in illegal or terrorist activities. Moreover, Iran is not a democracy with a reliable legal system, but a dictatorship run by the ayatollahs and the Revolutionary Guard where legal rights cannot possibly be guaranteed. There is simply no defensible reason for an American official, much less our top diplomat, to concern himself with how much investment and profit Iran can eke out of the nuclear deal. The effort to do so betrays America’s real interests in the Middle East, which are challenged by a richer and better resourced Iran.

The White House and congressional Republicans are once again sparring over the Iran nuclear deal, with the House Oversight Committee chairman calling on one of President Barack Obama’s top aides to testify at a hearing about how the administration sold the agreement to the public.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah) plans to convene the hearing Tuesday to look at “White House narratives on the Iran deal” and the administration’s public message on the negotiations and final agreement.
Mr. Chaffetz had asked Ben Rhodes, one of Mr. Obama’s top foreign policy advisers who led the White House communications effort, to testify. The request followed a New York Times Magazine story in which Mr. Rhodes discussed the administration’s media strategy, leading to charges the White House misled the public on aspects of the Iran negotiations and eventual agreement.

The White House has said it didn’t provide misleading information on the deal and that the House hearing is politically motivated.

Mr. Chaffetz said later Monday that the White House informed him Mr. Rhodes wouldn’t testify. “Talks to reporters and his ‘echo chamber’ but not Congress. Disappointing but typical,” Mr. Chaffetz said, in a Twitter message.

http://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/2016/05/it-didnt-start-with-marx.html An extraordinary book came my way, one which alters to some degree my own focus on the current conflict between socialism and conservatism, between secular political collectivism and religious political collectivism in America. This is George Watson’s The Lost Literature of Socialism, originally published in 1998 and reissued in 2001. Then, as now, it […]

Clinton Cash, the documentary film which I watched in previews yesterday, is based on the best-selling exposé of the same name by Peter Schweizer, the tireless investigative journalist who has devoted himself to confronting political corruption and crony capitalism regardless of the political affiliation of the perpetrators. Produced by Breitbart’s Stephen K. Bannon and directed by M. A. Taylor, Clinton Cash is crisply narrated by Schweizer and provides a relentless and devastating portrait of brazen financial venality in exchange for political favors.On Clinton Cash, Or, It’s Always Worse Than You Think | PJ Media

I read through Clinton Cash quickly when it came out last May. This was no right-wing hit job (as the Clinton campaign asserted) but rather a methodical and exhaustively sourced chronicle of how the Clintons parlayed Bill’s celebrity, Hillary’s position as secretary of State, and her possible future tenure as president of the United States into a veritable Niagara of cash.

Eye-popping speaking fees for Bill — $250,000, $500,000, even $750,000 a pop — and millions upon millions directed to the Clinton Foundation and its offshoots. Where was the money coming from? Did they actually find his “wisdom” that valuable?

No. The money came from multinational corporations that needed a favor. Shady foreign financiers. Dubious state entities in Africa, Saudi Arabia, Russia, South America, and elsewhere.

Are you worried about “money in politics”? Stop the car, get an extended-stay room, and take a long hard look at the Clintons’ operation for the last sixteen years.On Clinton Cash, Or, It’s Always Worse Than You Think | PJ Media

The Associated Press estimated that their net worth when they left the White House in 2000 was zero (really, minus $500K). Now they are worth about $200 million.

How did they do it? By “reading The Wall Street Journal” (classical reference)?

Not quite. The Clintons have perfected pay-to-play political influence peddling on a breathtaking scale. Reading Clinton Cash is a nauseating experience.

At the center of the book is not just a tale of private greed and venality. That is just business as usual in Washington (and elsewhere). No, what is downright scary is way the Clintons have been willing to trade away legitimate environmental concerns and even our national security for the sake of filthy lucre. CONTINUE AT SITE