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I appeared on Silvio Canto Jr's talk show from Dallas yesterday.  It's here.

APRIL 6,  2015

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:56 P.M. ET: 

COULD BE BIG – In a major development, Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer, the odds-on favorite to be the next Senate Minority Leader once Harry Reid retires, has placed himself in direct confrontation with President Obama.  From the Politico:  "Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, one of Capitol Hill’s most influential voices in the Iran nuclear debate, is strongly endorsing passage of a law opposed by President Barack Obama that would give Congress an avenue to reject the White House-brokered framework unveiled last week.  The comments Monday by the Democratic leader-in-waiting illustrate the enormity of the task ahead for Obama and his team: While there’s no guarantee that Congress would ultimately reject an agreement with Iran, there’s an increasingly bipartisan consensus that Congress should at least have the ability to do so."  Schumer is intensely ambitious and is considered one of the smartest members of the Senate.  The fact that he's willing to take on Obama may signal that he knows the votes are there to override a threatened presidential veto.  Obama and the Democratic left will not be amused, and may now try to block Schumer's accession to the leadership, backing someone like Elizabeth Warren instead.  But I think Schumer has the votes in his pocket. 

THE LIBERAL REVOLVING DOOR – From NewsBusters:  "According to CNN, MSNBC regular Karen Finney will be joining the yet-to-be-announced Hillary Clinton presidential campaign as a communications adviser and spokesperson. In 2012, the liberal Finney bitterly connected Rush Limbaugh to the death of Trayvon Martin: 'Rush Limbaugh calls a presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama, a magic negro...In the case of Trayvon, those festering stereotypes had lethal consequences.'"  Repeat after me:  "There is no liberal bias in the press."  And stop laughing.

GREAT CANADA – Canada will not be lifting sanctions on Iran anytime soon, despite the deal being worked out in Switzerland, but will instead wait to see if Iran's actions warrant a lifting.  This will drive Obama crazy, and, observers say, increase his determination to see Canada's Prime Minister Steve Harper defeated in this fall's Canadian election.  Harper is pro-American and pro-Israeli, and therefore the Obamans dislike him intensely.  Oh, did I say that Harper also favored the Keystone Pipeline, which was to run from Canada to our Gulf coast, before Obama killed it?  Vote for Steve.

MILESTONE – From London's Daily Mail:  "A judge has given a New York City woman permission to become the first person to legally file for divorce from her elusive husband via a Facebook message.
The woman's lawyer says the ruling was made by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Matthew Cooper.
The Daily News says Victor Sena Blood-Dzraku will be served with the divorce summons via a private Facebook message.  It will be repeated once a week for three consecutive weeks or until 'acknowledged' by Ellanora Baidoo's hard-to-find husband.  Attorney Andrew Spinnell says the couple married in 2009 in a civil ceremony."  On Facebook a divorce is called A Really Serious Defriending.

April 6, 2015       Permalink

RAND PAUL ABOUT TO ANNOUNCE – AT 11:08 A.M. ET:   Rand Paul is expected to announce of the presidency this week.  He's already giving us a preview of what a Paul campaign would look like.  From USA Today:

WASHINGTON — Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is pitching himself as a "different kind of Republican" in a new video released ahead of his expected presidential campaign announcement on Tuesday.

The libertarian-minded conservative is set to formally enter the GOP presidential race during a rally in Louisville, Ky. Paul will join Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a rival for the support of hard-line conservatives, as official candidates in the 2016 race.

"To fix Washington, we can't have business as usual," says Paul, in a clip taken from his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in February.

The nearly three-minute video was posted Sunday on Paul's website and YouTube channel.

The video highlights themes that Paul, first elected in the 2010 Tea Party wave, will incorporate in his campaign. His remarks from CPAC, where he won the presidential straw poll for a third straight year, are woven with positive comments from notable figures such as Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who ran for president in 2012, ex-national GOP chairman Michael Steele and even Jon Stewart of The Daily Show.

COMMENT:  As readers know, my enthusiasm for Rand Paul is limited.  Foreign policy is my first consideration, and Paul's views remind me a bit too much of the isolationism of the GOP of the 1930s.

I can't conceive of Paul getting the nomination, but I do welcome the challenge he will bring to other candidates. 

April 6, 2015       Permalink

CHILLING – AT 10:16 A.M. ET:  There's an old saying that diplomacy without military strength is like an orchestra without instruments.  Our military strength is being eroded by both the Obama administration and the refusal of Republicans in Congress to address the problem seriously.  Some Republicans are more concerned about the budget.  Even senior, on-duty officers are starting to speak out.  From the Military Times:   

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The Army is "only generating enough readiness for immediate consumption" while grappling with cuts that have left only a third of the service's brigades ready, the chief of staff said Wednesday.

"It's incumbent on all of us to understand that further reductions simply will put us into a place we simply cannot go," Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno said at the AUSA Institute of Land Warfare Global Force Symposium and Exposition here.

He amplified the dangers he sees now and ahead, particularly with the effects of sequestration.

"Today our nation is facing enormous challenges. I believe we are at a strategic inflection point," Odierno said. "Our nation is facing determined enemies across the globe that have the desire, the capabilities and with increasing capacity to threaten not only our security, but the security of our allies. We continue to witness change in velocity of instability, unforeseen just a few years ago."

He issued a challenge for the Army community to continue focusing on the importance of a strong national defense.

COMMENT:  We've been here before.  The gross negligence in the years leading up to World War II, the reckless disarmament after that war, the Jimmy Carter years.  Weakness always ends badly.  We thought we'd begun to learn that lesson in the later part of the 20th Century, but I'm afraid it's being forgotten. 

The great presidential symbol of American strength was Ronald Reagan, and he left office some 26 years ago.

April 6, 2015       Permalink

ARAB DISSENTERS – AT 9:43 A.M. ET:  Israel isn't the only country looking at the Iran agreement with dismay.  The Sunni Arab states, especially the Gulf states, believe they've been sold out, thrown under that bus parked outside the White House.  From The Times of Israel:

Saudi officials may have been masking their dismay over the framework nuclear agreement reached last week in Switzerland between world powers and Iran, but the kingdom’s official media outlets are expressing a sense of betrayal loud and clear.

“Gulf states — and especially Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain — have been experiencing the nightmare of an Iranian attack for decades,” the former editor-in-chief of Saudi-owned daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat, Abdul Rahman Rashed, wrote in an op-ed titled “Iran vs. Saudi Arabia” on Monday. “Now, after the nuclear agreement, there is no doubt that the danger has doubled. People are angry with the Obama administration for selling this region cheaply. He left it to its own devices to face an evil state.”

US President Barack Obama’s vague recent promise to defend Saudi Arabia’s borders from possible Iranian aggression requires better clarification, Rashed insisted.

“As long as the Americans don’t explicitly state their commitment to defend Saudi Arabia from Iran and Iraq, we will face large-scale regional anarchy as a result of the nuclear deal,” he asserted. “The Iranians are claiming that Obama is uninterested in the security of the Gulf and his American allies in the region. This Iranian thinking will lead to more regional wars.”

COMMENT:  Gee, don't hold anything back.  The anger is obvious, the sense of betrayal clear.  One intriguing question:  Will this belief that Obama has abandoned our allies in the region lead to an informal alliance of moderate Arab countries and Israel?  It would make sense, if the Arabs could overcome their ideologies for a few moments. 

Obama has invited the leaders of the Gulf states to meet with him in Washington to discuss the Iran deal.  They may come, but I don't think they're willing to trust anything this president has to say.

April 6, 2015        Permalink

IRAN AGREEMENT – AT 9:05 A.M. ET:  The Iran nuclear agreement, or understanding, or partial agreement, or something, is dominating discussion across the internet. 

Obama has been giving interviews defending the deal.  He gave one to Tom Friedman of The New York Times, in which he said all the right things about the security of Israel.  The problem is, Obama has so little credibility remaining, except on the party-line left, that what he says is met with a general yawn.

In the meantime, real experts are warning that the Iranian deal is very bad.  From ace defense reporter Bill Gertz, at the Washington Free Beacon: 

Despite promises by President Obama that Iranian cheating on a new treaty will be detected, verifying Tehran’s compliance with a future nuclear accord will be very difficult if not impossible, arms experts say.

“The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action will not be effectively verifiable,” said Paula DeSutter, assistant secretary of state for verification, compliance, and implementation from 2002 to 2009.

Obama said Saturday that the framework nuclear deal reached in Switzerland would provide “unprecedented verification.”

International inspectors “will have unprecedented access to Iran’s nuclear program because Iran will face more inspections than any other country in the world,” he said in a Saturday radio address.

“If Iran cheats, the world will know it,” Obama said. “If we see something suspicious, we will inspect it. So this deal is not based on trust, it’s based on unprecedented verification.”

But arms control experts challenged the administration’s assertions that a final deal to be hammered out in detail between now and June can be verified, based on Iran’s past cheating and the failure of similar arms verification procedures.

A White House fact sheet on the outline of the future agreement states that the new accord will not require Iran to dismantle centrifuges, or to remove stockpiled nuclear material from the country or convert such material into less dangerous fuel rods.

The agreement also would permit continued nuclear research at facilities built in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which Iran signed in 1970 but has violated repeatedly since at least the early 2000s.

The centerpiece for verifying Iranian compliance will be a document called the Additional Protocol of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), according to the White House.

However, the State Department’s most recent report on arms compliance, made public in July, states that Iran signed an IAEA Additional Protocol in 2003 but “implemented it provisionally and selectively from 2003 to 2006,” when Tehran stopped complying altogether.

“The framework claims that Iran will once again execute an Additional Protocol with IAEA,” said William R. Harris, an international lawyer who formerly took part in drafting and verifying U.S. arms control agreements. “This might yield unprecedented verification opportunities, but can the international community count on faithful implementation?”

Harris also said Iran could cheat by shipping secretly built nuclear arms to North Korea, based on published reports indicating Iran co-financed North Korea’s nuclear tests, and that Iranian ballistic missile test signals reportedly showed “earmarks” of North Korean guidance systems.

COMMENT:  Read the whole thing.  A Bill Gertz report is always authoritative.  This one is very worrying.  The point is made later in the piece that the framework agreement announced Thursday does not require Iran to correct its past violations of nuclear agreements.  They are, in effect, accepted.  What incentive does Iran have to honor the new agreement or any future ones? 

April 6,  2015     Permalink

APRIL 5,  2015

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 10:14 P.M. ET: 

ACLU WOBBLY – The American Civil Liberties Union is in financial trouble.  From American Thinker:  "As the punch line to an old joke about lawyers goes, it’s a good start. The American Civil Liberties Union, theoretically a non-ideological defender of the Constitution but in practice increasingly hard left, is running into financial difficulties and just announced layoffs for 7 percent of its lawyers.  Why the difficulties? It’s a little unclear, but Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit writes, 'What I hear is that they’ve moved too far left, too fast, and it’s hurt their donations.'"  A long time ago the ACLU was a respectable civil liberties organization, sometimes even courageous, but began to drift left in the turbulent sixties.  Twelve years ago an ACLU lawyer told me there were members of the group's national board who didn't even believe in free speech any longer.  Maybe they'll learn, or maybe they'll fade away.

ALREADY IRAN BENEFITS – From AP:  "TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — The Tehran Stock Exchange has rallied after world powers clinched a nuclear framework agreement with Tehran, reflecting hopes that some crippling international sanctions could soon be lifted.  The official IRNA news agency says the Tehran Stock Exchange index rose 6.9 percent over two days. The agency says the index improved by 4,535 points to 70,261 on Sunday — the second working day of Iran's new year. It was the highest level in at least 18 months.  The framework deal announced Thursday envisions a final agreement that would pare back Iran's nuclear program for at least a decade in return for sanctions relief. Iran and six world powers, including the United States, hope to reach a final agreement by June 30."  Once money starts to be made because of this deal, it will be virtually impossible to punish Tehran, even if it engages in outright cheating.  The money will talk, protection against Iranian nukes will walk.

ARE THEY SERIOUS? – From the Washington Times:  "There will be no repercussions for the investigative reporter or editors responsible for a now-retracted Rolling Stone cover story in November that falsely accused Phi Kappa Psi fraternity members at the University of Virginia of gang-raping a freshman coed.  In a stinging report released Sunday evening, an independent review by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism said the magazine was reckless in vetting its sources, including the purported victim, identified only as 'Jackie,' and neglected 'basic, even routine journalistic practice.'  'If Jackie was attacked and, if so, by whom, cannot be established definitively from the evidence available,' the review stated, adding that there needed to be a better balance between 'sensitivity to victims and the demands of verification.'  The 12,866-word report, released Sunday night after more than three months of comprehensive research, said the story’s author, Rolling Stone contributing editor Sabrina Rubin Erdely, could have avoided catastrophe had she contacted other sources for fair comment."  But no punishment for the "journalists" who caused all this.  Okay, the report might be punishment enough, but the public looks for suspensions, loss of pay, or something similar to drive home the seriousness of the offense.

April 5,  2015     Permalink

THE GOP FIGHTS THE DEAL – AT 11:56 A.M. ET:   Legislation to give Congress a role in the Iran nuclear deal is moving forward, although it faces a presidential veto.  The fight to override that veto may be the political story of the year.  From Fox: 

Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker said Sunday that he’s moving ahead with his bill to give Congress a mandatory review of the recent Iran nuclear agreement but that the legislation is still several votes short of veto-proof passage.

Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told “Fox News Sunday” that the GOP-controlled chamber is two or three votes shy of the 67 needed to override a vowed White House veto. Corker said he talked over the weekend to Democratic holdouts to get their votes and reach the veto-proof majority.

He also made clear that he is open to a deal that would curtail Iran’s ability to create a nuclear weapon but said that “Congress needs to be playing a role.”

The United States and five other world powers reached the tentative agreement Thursday with Iran to limit that country’s nuclear enrichment program toward a final, June 30 deal.

The Republican-led Congress has insisted that members have a final say on the deal to ensure Americans that the Obama administration is not accepting a bad deal.

“The American people want to know somebody is teasing out the information” about the deal, Corker said Sunday. “Congress has to be involved in this way.”

To be sure, within hours of the framework deal being announced, Iran and the United States released significantly different details -- including those on inspections, when roughly $130 billion in economic sanctions on Tehran would be lifted, the number of centrifuges that will remain and what will happen to the country’s nuclear stockpile.

The Senate committee is set to vote April 14 on the bipartisan bill, which has 13 Democratic cosponsors.

COMMENT:  Good for Bob Corker.  However, I'm not at all sure he'll get the votes to override the president's veto.  This president plays Chicago politics.  Those Democrats who, out of conscience, want to override will be threatened, even accused of racism.  That's the way the game is played.  Their careers might well be destroyed if they go against Obama. 

The Congressional Black Caucus is already out there insisting that Congress show respect for "the first black president."  This will get very ugly.  The fact that the Iran issue involves the lives of millions of people will fade into the background.  Political self-preservation may, in the end, give Obama a victory in the veto fight.

April 5, 2015       Permalink

TELLING IT LIKE IT IS – QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 11:31 A.M. ET:   Bill Kristol, in Weekly Standard, bluntly states a position against the so-called "deal" with Iran, and what must be done to defeat it.  No mincing:

The whole of the deal is a set of concessions to an aggressive regime with a history of cheating that will now be enabled to stand one unverifiable cheat away from nuclear weapons. In making these concessions, the U.S, and its partners are ignoring that regime's past and present actions, strengthening that regime, and sending the message that there is no price to be paid for a regime's lying and cheating and terror and aggression.

We opponents of the deal disdain to conceal our views and aims. We urge Congress to stop this bad deal. We urge Congress to kill it. We believe sanctions, sabotage, and the threat of military force can better constrain the Iranian regime's nuclear weapons program than this bad deal. But we will also say openly that, if it comes to it, airstrikes to set back the Iranian nuclear weapons program are preferable to this deal that lets it go forward.

Britain has a parliamentary system of government, and so Neville Chamberlain's parliamentary majority ensured the Munich agreement would go forward. The U.S. Constitution, on the other hand, provides for a separation of powers. As Hamilton explains in Federalist #75:

"However proper or safe it may be in governments where the executive magistrate is an hereditary monarch, to commit to him the entire power of making treaties, it would be utterly unsafe and improper to intrust that power to an elective magistrate of four years' duration. ... The history of human conduct does not warrant that exalted opinion of human virtue which would make it wise in a nation to commit interests of so delicate and momentous a kind, as those which contain its intercourse with the rest of the world, to the sole disposal of a magistrate created and circumstanced as would be a President of the United States."

It is now up to the members of Congress to do their duty, on this delicate and momentous occasion. It is up to members of Congress to refuse to accede to this set of concessions made by our current executive magistrate, concessions that would put one of the world's most dangerous regimes further along the road to acquiring the world's most dangerous weapons.

COMMENT:  That says it so well.  We are talking about nuclear weapons, not 100-pound bombs.  Nuclear weapons can wipe out a civilization in one hour. 

The deal is already being celebrated by the ditzy left as moving us toward peace.  It does nothing of the kind.  It will probably make eventual war with Iran more likely, or make more likely Iran's control of much of the Mideast. 

The president doesn't care.  His syncophants will tell him that he's ready for Mount Rushmore.

April 5, 2015       Permalink

THE TROUBLE GROWS – AT 11:06 A.M. ET:  It's being noticed more and more that Iran's interpretation of "the deal" on its nuclear weapons varies quite a bit from that presented by the Obama administration.  This is real trouble.  From the respected Amir Taheri at the New York Post.  This is what results when journalists actually do the job: 

“Iran Agrees to Detailed Nuclear Outline,” The New York Times headline claimed on Friday. That found an echo in the Washington Post headline of the same day: “Iran agrees to nuclear restrictions in framework deal with world powers.”

But the first thing to know about the highly hyped “historic achievement” that President Obama is trying to sell is that there has been no agreement on any of the fundamental issues that led to international concern about Iran’s secret nuclear activities and led to six mandatory resolutions by the United Nations Security Council and 13 years of diplomatic seesaw.

All we have is a number of contradictory statements by various participants in the latest round of talks in Switzerland, which together amount to a diplomatic dog’s dinner.

First, we have a joint statement in English in 291 words by Iranian Foreign Minister Muhammad Javad Zarif and the European Union foreign policy point-woman Federica Mogherini, who led the so-called P5+1 group of nations including the US in the negotiations.

Next we have the official Iranian text, in Persian, which runs into 512 words. The text put out by the French comes with 231 words. The prize for “spinner-in-chief” goes to US Secretary of State John Kerry who has put out a text in 1,318 words and acts as if we have a done deal.
It is not only in their length that the texts differ.

They amount to different, at times starkly contradictory, narratives.

The Mogherini and French texts are vague enough to be ultimately meaningless, even as spin.
The Persian text carefully avoids words that might give the impression that anything has been agreed by the Iranian side or that the Islamic Republic has offered any concessions.

The Iranian text is labelled as a press statement only. The American text, however, pretends to enumerate “Parameters for a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” and claims key points have been “decided.” What remains to be done is work out “implementation details.”

When referring to what Iran is supposed to do, the Iranian text uses a device of Persian grammar known as “nakarah,” a form of verbs in which the authorship of a deed remains open to speculation.
For example: “ It then happened that . . .” or “that is to be done.”

But when it comes to things the US and allies are supposed to do, the grammatical form used is “maerfah” which means the precise identification of the author.

COMMENT:  Read the whole thing.  It's absolutely fascinating.  Taheri knows the language and knows his stuff.  It turns out that Obama's "interpretation" of the "agreement" and Iran's are far apart.  And on this the lives of millions will depend.

There really is no true agreement.  It's a mirage, set up for the greater glory of Barack, and his "legacy."  No wonder they're dancing in the streets of Tehran. 

April 5,  2015     Permalink