RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Islamic Republic of Iran, since its founding in 1979, has had an ideology that seeks to “export the Islamic revolution” — if necessary, by force.

Despite what President Obama likes to say, it is not true that the agreement, “permanently prohibits Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon” or “cuts off all of Iran’s pathways to a bomb.” This agreement means the U.S. has accepted that after 15 years, or sooner, Iran may build as many bombs as it likes.

Iran is not a country busy trying to preserve its own sovereignty. Iran, instead, undermines other countries’ sovereignty.

Iran’s regime is extremely pragmatic: it sees that its survival is not, threatened no matter what it does. It sees — as does everyone else – that transgressions are, in fact, rewarded.

Why does the U.S. wish to allow a regime that wants to destroy America’s closest Middle East ally to acquire more advanced conventional — and later, nuclear — weapons? Why would anyone allow a country that gives missiles to terrorists to get hold of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)?

The appeasement of Iran in respect of its nuclear development is so likely to be the prelude to future violence that other danger-spots are overlooked. Vladimir Putin’s imperialist Russia is bearing down on Estonia, formerly occupied by Communist Russia and now independent and a member of the EU and NATO. Last September, President Obama visited this Baltic State, and gave an assurance that NATO’s doctrine of collective defense would be applicable in the event of Russian aggression. Only two days later, a Russian strong-arm squad crossed the border, and on Estonian territory kidnapped Eston Kohver, an Estonian security agent. Taken illegally to Russia, he was held in prison, for all we know in the former KGB and now FSB’s Lubianka headquarters itself, where tens of thousands of innocent victims have met their fates.

Joe Biden had good reasons to huddle privately with Elizabeth Warren on Saturday at his official residence. The Massachusetts senator may have chosen not to run next year, but her populist rhetoric and agenda dominate the 2016 Democratic contest. Should Biden challenge Hillary Clinton for the nomination, he will need either Warren’s neutrality or her blessing.

Socialist Bernie Sanders isn’t the only candidate pounding the drums of class warfare. Hillary claims “the deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top,” attacks high-level corporate salaries, and says that “we have to go beyond Dodd-Frank” in passing laws to rein in Wall Street firms. All of these themes are straight from Elizabeth Warren’s playbook and bear scant resemblance to the centrism that Bill Clinton embraced as president in the 1990s.

But Warren is stoutly refusing to endorse any candidate, so far preferring to use her leverage to influence the entire Democratic field. In an interview on Friday, she told WBZ in Boston: “I don’t think anyone has been anointed.”

Happening right here in the USA….erasing and air brushing history to enable self loathing and “blame America first.” rsk
One hundred years ago this month, the six-day Battle of Lone Pine came to an end on the Gallipoli Peninsular. All these years later, the ghosts of those long-gone Diggers face an enemy even more implacable than Johnny Turk, as Meryn Bendle chronicles in his latest book

Anzac and Its Enemies: The History War on Australia’s National Identity
by Mervyn F. Bendle
Quadrant Books, 2015, 343 pages, $44.95

For most Australians, the Anzac legend born in the First World War represents precisely those values which Australians cherish—courage, initiative, egalitarianism, mateship, loyalty and sacrifice. While this is at the heart of Australia’s national identity, with its celebration centred on Anzac Day, it is detested by a powerful group who loathe Australia. In Anzac and Its Enemies Mervyn Bendle explains the origins of the Anzac tradition and exposes the long campaign against it.

The ultimate wish of the campaigners, first the Communist Party and its allies and then the intellectual elites, is not only to destroy the legend. It is to replace it with a national self-loathing about almost everything in our history which most Australians hold dear.

In the discussion of Donald Trump’s agenda for dealing with illegal immigration, lots of his proposals are said to be absurd. But are they all?

Mass Deportations?

Targeted deportations are not the same as mass deportations. Trump may want all of the latter, but just as absurdly the Democratic Party seems not to want any of the former.

We don’t know how many illegal immigrants are in the United States, only that the proverbial figure of “11 million” exists in amber since the last century, and despite massive influxes each year. So there is no way to ascertain either the size of the pool of illegal immigrants or how many have committed crimes. Rounding up every illegal alien and immediately deporting them is not feasible, but that does not mean that over one million with criminal records could not be returned to their home countries as undesirables.

Even liberal sources suggest that somewhere between 12% to 15% of that figure are likely criminals or have arrest records. Some states report a fourth to a third of their murders are likely committed by illegal aliens. That cohort makes up over 25% of federal prisoners.

In other words, the number of what Trump in politically incorrect fashion called “good people” (e.g., does he mean those without a criminal record other than entering the U.S. illegally?) is likely quite large, in both absolute numbers, and percentage wise.

Padraig O’Malley’s “The Two-State ­Delusion” is an impressive and frustrating book. It’s impressive because ­O’Malley, a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Boston who has written ­extensively on South Africa and Northern Ireland, has done a tremendous amount of research about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He’s not only delved deeply into its literature; he’s also interviewed dozens of participants on both sides. The result is a book so packed with information that it will reward even the reader so dedicated that she consumes the Israel-Palestine stories buried on Page A17 of The Times.

O’Malley, for instance, considers at length the potential economic viability of a Palestinian state, something often overlooked by American commentators. He notes that not only does public sector employment constitute more than 50 percent of the Palestinian Authority’s budget but also that “the tax base is small” and tax “collection practices are lax.” He observes as well that a Palestinian state would most likely be unable to desalinate water and thus “would almost necessarily have to import water from Israel, which has the necessary resources and expertise in the field, but water dependency devalues sovereignty.”

An influential Saudi former military commander on making common cause with Israel and warming toward Russia as the U.S. backs away.
President Obama knew how to soothe Arab nerves rankled by his nuclear diplomacy with Iran. In May he convened a Camp David summit with the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council. The only problem: Of six GCC heads of state, only two showed up. The most powerful and influential, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, wasn’t among the attendees.

The snub was a rare public expression of the kingdom’s anger at Mr. Obama. Behind Riyadh’s ire is the sense that, in its pursuit of a nuclear accommodation with Tehran, America is tilting away from its traditional Middle East allies and toward Iran’s ayatollahs. For these Arab states, the new Washington dispensation means forging security arrangements that a few years ago would have seemed unthinkable. Perhaps the most astonishing of these developments is the nascent alliance between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

The president is willing to gamble on U.S. security for the sake of his personal legacy.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest said recently that the Obama administration is in the “final stages of drafting a plan to safely and responsibly” close the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay. Our home states of Kansas and South Carolina are being considered as potential sites for housing the enemy combatants transferred from Guantanamo. Defense Department officials visited Fort Leavenworth, Kan., on Aug. 14 and will be visiting the Naval Brig in Charleston, S.C., on Monday to survey the facilities.

When Barack Obama won the White House in 2008, he announced that Guantanamo would be closed in the first year of his presidency. This was a political promise with little regard for recidivism rates, the continuing conflicts in Iraq or Afghanistan, and most important, America’s national security. So it is fortunate that the deadline was not met.

Mr. Gramm, a former Republican senator from Texas and chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
His progressive legacy won’t last because he passed vague laws and abused his executive power to impose policies that are unpopular.
How did Barack Obama join Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan to become one of the three most transformative presidents in the past century? He was greatly aided by the financial crisis that erupted during the 2008 campaign. This gave the new president a mandate and a large Democratic congressional majority that fully embraced his progressive agenda.Having learned from previous progressive failures, President Obama embarked on a strategy of minimizing controversial details that could doom his legislative efforts. But no factor was more decisive than his unshakable determination not to let Congress, the courts, the Constitution or a failed presidency—as America has traditionally defined it—stand in his way.

Americans have always found progressivism appealing in the abstract, but they have revolted when they saw the details. President Clinton’s very progressive agenda—to nationalize health care and use private pensions to promote social goals—was hardly controversial during the 1992 election. But once the debate turned to the details, Americans quickly understood that his health-care plan would take away their freedom. Even Mr. Clinton’s most reliable allies, the labor unions, rebelled when they understood that under his pension plan their pensions would serve “social goals” instead of maximizing their retirement benefits.

Is it better to represent the agenda of one rich guy or 1,000 rich guys?

Donald Trump continues to lead the GOP presidential field in the polls, which means it’s time to start taking his ideas more seriously. One place to start is his argument that because he’s a billionaire who doesn’t depend on contributions from others, he’s somehow superior because he’s immune from political influence.

The casino magnate refers to his competitors who accept political donations as “puppets” who are “totally controlled by special interests, lobbyists and donors.” In contrast, he says, “I don’t need anybody’s money. I don’t want anybody’s money.” It is a consistent part of his pitch to voters—that he’s “very rich” and therefore cannot be induced to indulge a narrow special interest.

The argument plays into the current political frustration with Washington, but it is as self-serving as it is dangerous to democracy. What he’s really saying is that nobody who isn’t wealthy should be able to run for President because only the superrich can be untainted by political corruption.