Thursday, May 10, 2018
Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) questions Donald Trump's pick to head the CIA on the morality of waterboarding
Personally,I would have liked to hear Gina Haspel respond that if a similar event occurred she would skip the water boarding, go right to cutting off their nuts with bolt cutters and use a propane torch to stop the bleeding.
Wednesday, May 09, 2018
The chickens come home to roost on Obama's disregard for the US Constitution
Pollak: In Leaving Iran Deal, Trump Ends Obama’s Legacy of Appeasement
Carsten Koall/Getty Images
President Donald Trump’s announcement Tuesday that the U.S. is leaving the Iran deal marks the end of what his predecessor, Barack Obama, considered his main foreign policy legacy.
Trump will earn credit from his supporters for keeping his promise. But in truth, the Iran deal was undone by its own terms. It did not stop Iran from enriching uranium; it did not stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon, eventually; and it did not stop Iran’s global aggression.
In fact, the Iran deal was not even a deal at all.
It was never signed by any of the parties (the U.S., Iran, France, the UK, Germany, China, and Russia). It was unclear about crucial subjects like ballistic missiles, because the “deal” was described differently by the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and by the UN Security Council Resolutions that were meant to implement it. And, crucially, it was never sent to the U.S. Senate for ratification.
Obama’s disregard for the Treaty Clause of the U.S. Constitution was of a piece with his general disregard for the constitutional constraints on the power of the federal government and the presidency. His refusal to submit the agreement to Senate scrutiny, and his party’s abuse of the filibuster to prevent even a weak Senate vote, deepened the damage that Obamacare — his other struggling “legacy,” in domestic policy — did to American civic culture.
More than Obama’s autocratic style, what Trump ended is Obama’s legacy of appeasement.
Barack Obama came to power convinced that the United States was at best a negative force in world affairs, and at worst the cause of the world’s problems. He believed that America could be a force for good, but only if it renounced its traditional allies, abandoned its principles of freedom, and gave up its national interests in favor of rising regional powers elsewhere.
In his first year in office, Obama backed away from agreements that his predecessor had made to provide missile defense in Europe. He also reached out to the Muslim world, beginning with obsequious speeches in Cairo and in Ankara, and deep genuflection to the Saudi king. When the Green Revolution took to the streets of Iran, Obama allowed the regime to consolidate power. He criticized Israel openly while cozying up to the Cuban dictatorship.
Trump has reversed most of that. He launched attacks on Syria for using chemical weapons — policing the “red line” Obama drew but would not enforce. He withdrew from the Paris Climate Accords and exposed it as a fraud. Later this week, he will move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
“The United States no longer issues empty threats. When I make promises, I keep them,” he said. Thus ended Obama’s experiment with appeasement and autocracy.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named to Forward’s 50 “most influential” Jews in 2017. He is the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
Tuesday, May 08, 2018
Sunday, May 06, 2018
Where is Elmer Fudd?
NUNES: Congress to Hold AG Sessions in Contempt
DOJ says "[no] disclosure...can risk severe consequences"
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes revealed Sunday that Congress will hold Department of Justice Attorney General Jeff Sessions in contempt for refusing to turn over classified information the committee has requested, he stated in a phone interview with Fox and Friends.
The Department of Justice also shot back on Sunday, releasing the letter sent to Nunes on May 3, which addressed the classified information Nunes had requested. It appears from the letter Nunes had asked for information on a specific individual, not yet named and considered by DOJ to be a very valuable person for a counterintelligence operation.
“Disclosure of responsive information to such requests can risk severe consequences, including potential loss of human lives, damage to relationships with valued international partners, compromise of ongoing criminal investigations, and interference with intelligence activities,” stated the May, 3 letter from Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd.
But Nunes is not buying it. He warned Sessions that ignoring deadlines requested by Congress will result in contempt. Nunes also referred to comments lambasting Special Counsel Robert Mueller by U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III, who said in a Virginia Federal Court Friday, “we don’t want anyone in this country with unfettered power. It’s unlikely you’re going to persuade me the special prosecutor has power to do anything he or she wants…The American people feel pretty strongly that no one has unfettered power.”
“The only thing left that we can do is we have to move quickly to hold the Attorney General of the United States in contempt…”
Nunes noted that two weeks ago, the committee sent a classified letter to Sessions and “per usual it was ignored… last week we sent a subpoena and we got a letter stating they are not going to comply with our subpoena on very important information that we need.”
“The only thing left that we can do is we have to move quickly to hold the Attorney General of the United States in contempt and that’s what I’m going to press for this week,” Nunes said.
Boyd stated that Nunes’ request had been reviewed by all agencies, including the White House.
“After careful evaluation and following consultations with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the White House, the Department has determined that, consistent with applicable law and longstanding Executive Branch policy, it is not in a position to provide the information responsive to your request regarding a specific individual,” the letter states.
But according to Congressional sources the information requested is necessary for the committee to conduct its review and the constant battles with the DOJ and FBI hamper their ability to do sufficient oversight.
Nunes, like many others have noted their frustration with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation saying, “we found out Friday from the judge (Ellis) it kind of looks like this whole investigation has gone off the rails.”
“If you have a counterintelligence investigation opened up on you as an American citizen, this is done secretly with only a few peoples knowledge and if they go to court they go to a secret court to get a warrant on you like they did with Carter Page. So there is a very small apparatus in our country that holds the check and balance authority between Congress and the Executive Branch and when the Obama administration decided to move forward on a counterintelligence investigation in a campaign of all things that’s how we’ve gotten to here,” he added.
Saturday, May 05, 2018
Friday, May 04, 2018
Trade war looms as US and China take hardline stance
KLRJ
A couple of things. First, this "trade war" has been going on at least since Normalization in 1979 but really since around the time Nixon went to Peking, when the US lifted the ban on selling China dual-use and other dual-use "advanced technologies." The US was too powerful, too large, and too arrogant, and US business leaders too greedy to care at the time. The odds of converting China's government to a west-friendly government weren't zero, but they were very low. China, especially under the CCP, would never be content being dominated by a western worldview. The west decided to go for the money to be made trading without worrying about what is was helping Beijing build. Second, "negotiations" is a silly word. This isn't about fixing a trade imbalance. It's about whether Beijing, now with their western-educated smiling faces in suits and Hermes ties, saying all the right things as they wave their Mont Blancs around, can put the West back to sleep and let them continue on their trajectory. They built half the world's steel capacity while the West slept and are building a large conventional military with that.
The democracies must have that and other industries to fight conventional wars. Trump putting tariffs on steel and aluminum to protect those US industries might upset EU and Japan, et al, but they'll make sure theirs survive too. No free country is going to let itself be in the position of having to buy its materials for national defense from China. Today's focus though isn't on flows, it's on "Made in China 2025".
Xi wants to do with advanced tech what China has done with iron, steel, aluminum, solar panels, wind turbines, etc, ie, dominate those sectors. If they kill their western counterparts all the better. Market funded businesses can not compete with businesses with unlimited funding coming from the government of China. Advanced semiconductors, AI, electric vehicles, robotics, aerospace, etc, are all the foundation of today's economy and military. So "negotiating" an end to the "trade war" means stopping Beijing from weakening or killing off those sectors in the west like it tried/is trying to do in steel etc. So, it's not about trade balance. It's about whether you want the Chinese Communist Party's system to dominate all walks of life in an increasingly growing sphere of the globe or whether you want market-based democracies to survive to lead another century.
We've got our problems, but anything that continues to allow China to grow on her current trajectory makes our problems worse and maybe insoluble and/or fatal as time passes. That probably means a whole lot less trade with China and, especially, keeping the Chinese government from acquiring our advanced tech and using virtually unlimited state money to kill off our businesses in those sectors in the West. Not too much to "negotiate" there. China under the communist party doesn't fit well in the western trading system, but she'll stay and continue to do what she's been doing to the West so long as western leaders don't do something about it.
Tuesday, May 01, 2018
Obama , Kerry and Brennan have some explaining to do
Obama Bros. Speechless After Netanyahu Exposes Iran Deal Lies
The vaunted “echo chamber” that President Barack Obama’s aide Ben Rhodes created to sell the Iran deal was quiet on Monday, in the aftermath of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s revelations of new intelligence proving that Iran had lied to the world about its nuclear weapons program.
Netanyahu presented a trove of over 100,000 files, both paper and electronic, that he said Israel had obtained from a “vault” where Iran had stored an archive of its nuclear research. The files included diagrams of nuclear detonation devices, nuclear warhead designs, and plans for nuclear testing sites, among other incriminating information.
The intelligence haul, Netanyahu said, shows that Iran lied to the world when its leaders said it had never had a nuclear weapons program.
(In 2015, “moderate” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said: “Iran has never sought to build nuclear weapons.”)
Netanyahu also said that the files show that Iran also failed to come clean about its past nuclear research, as required by the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — the “Iran deal” — in 2015.
Moreover, Netanyahu said, the files suggested strongly that Iran’s past nuclear weapons program was continuing under the guise of scientific research within the Iranian defense department, conducted by exactly the same people. And the files also show that Iran’s intent was to revive the nuclear weapons program at a later date, he said.
Supporters of the Iran deal were silent.
Former Secretary of State John Kerry, who said in 2015 that the U.S. had “absolute knowledge” about Iran’s past military uses of nuclear research, had nothing to say on his Twitter feed.
Former UN Ambassador Samantha Power, who urged Congress not to reject the Iran deal in 2015, was active on Twitter, but said nothing about the new revelations about Iran.
Former National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor — one of the co-founders of the “Obama bros.” podcast, Pod Save America, found time to call Trump an “idiot” on Twitter, but said nothing about the Iran news.
And Rhodes himself, who established the pro-Iran deal “echo chamber,” said nothing.
A few pro-Iran deal observers weighed in, mostly arguing that the Iran deal was working — and that it allowed for monitoring Iran’s nuclear activities (ignoring the fact that Iran has been able to keep international inspectors out of military sites).
The Rand Corporation’s Dalia Dassa Kaye minimized Netanyahu’s revelations: “Is this news? That’s why there was a major international agreement to curb Iranian nuclear development and most of the world believes it is working.”
Matt Duss, a foreign policy advisor to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), tweeted sarcastically: “Based on Netanyahu’s presentation, it seems like it would be a really great idea to have a multilateral agreement that restricts and monitors Iran’s nuclear program.”
CNN analyst John Kirby, a spokesman for the State Department under Obama, essentially ignored the news entirely and insisted that the alternative to the Iran deal would be worse:
None of these defenses grappled with the fundamental weaknesses of the Iran deal — namely, its lack of full monitoring, its failure to control Iranian missile development, and the fact that its major provisions expire over time.
And none acknowledged the fundamental problem of Iran lying to the world about its nuclear weapons research — as the Obama administration defended Iran’s good intentions, insisting that it had “absolute knowledge” of past and present Iranian activities.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named to Forward’s 50 “most influential” Jews in 2017. He is the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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