Minneapolis Needs Help / Or Perhaps Republican Officials

U.N. Human Rights Council: Oxymoron

Obama Lied About the Iran Deal

From columnist Marc A. Thiessen in the Washington Post: a blow by blow account of how the Obama Administration allowed Iran access to international financial markets, contradicting terms of the deal, and then lied about it to Congress. You can read the blow-by-blow, but here is the summary:

In other words, the Obama administration: (1) told Congress it would not allow Iran access to U.S. financial institutions; (2) issued a special license allowing Iran to do exactly that; (3) unsuccessfully pressured U.S. banks to help Iran; (4) lied to Congress and the American people about what it had done; (5) admitted in internal emails that these efforts “exceeded” U.S. obligations under the nuclear deal; (6) sent officials, including bank regulators, around the world to urge foreign financial institutions to do business with Iran; and (7) promised that they would get nothing more than a slap on the wrist for violating U.S. sanctions.

But even before this:

First, President Barack Obama failed to disclose to Congress the existence of secret side deals on inspections when he transmitted the nuclear accord to Capitol Hill. (They were only uncovered by chance when then-Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) learned about them during a meeting with International Atomic Energy Agency officials in Vienna.) Then, we learned that the Obama administration had secretly sent a plane to Tehran loaded with $400 million in Swiss francs, euros and other currencies on the same day Iran released four American hostages, which was followed by two more secret flights carrying another $1.3 billion in cash.

The fundamental problem here, aside from the fact that liberal Democrats like Obama take a tolerant attitude toward America’s enemies, is they desire to get an “agreement” that can be touted as “fixing the problem” and draw plaudits from the goody-two-shoes internationalists.

Obama’s Paris Climate Accord is a classic example.

Let’s hope that Trump doesn’t get subverted by the same mentality in dealing with Little Rocket Man.

Doing and Undoing

Squashed

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Trying to Clean Up the Mess

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Phony Paris Climate Accord

If the promises made in Paris were pretty tepid, the performance of nations in meeting them has been equally bad. From New York Magazine:

Remember Paris? It was not even two years ago that the celebrated climate accords were signed — defining two degrees of global warming as a must-meet target and rallying all the world’s nations to meet it — and the returns are already dispiritingly grim.

This week, the International Energy Agency announced that carbon emissions grew 1.7 percent in 2017, after an ambiguous couple of years optimists hoped represented a leveling off, or peak; instead, we’re climbing again. Even before the new spike, not a single major industrial nation was on track to fulfill the commitments it made in the Paris treaty. To keep the planet under two degrees of warming — a level that was, not all that long ago, defined as the threshold of climate catastrophe — all signatory nations have to match or better those commitments. There are 195 signatories, of which only the following are considered even “in range” of their Paris targets: Morocco, Gambia, Bhutan, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, India, and the Philippines. This puts Donald Trump’s commitment to withdraw from the treaty in a useful perspective; in fact, his spite may ultimately prove perversely productive, since the evacuation of American leadership on climate seems to have mobilized China, eager to claim the mantle and far more consequential to the future of the planet because of its size and relative poverty, to adopt a much more aggressive posture toward climate. Of course those renewed Chinese commitments are, at this point, just rhetorical, too.

Of course, if the Paris Accord are something between a “farce” and a “fraud,” that doesn’t mean that a strong accord that works would be a bad idea.

But it does mean that the media and politicians like Al Gore and Barack Obama have been, either through ignorance or mendacity or ideological bias, lying to the American people.

Obama’s Political Rhetoric

Not nearly so crude as Trump’s, but every bit as mean spirited.

Washington/Hollywood: Axis of Corruption

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Trump vs. Obama on Foreign Policy

Black Lives Matter Lauded Fidel Castro

We are behind the curve on this, but better late than never. From the Huffington Post:

Upon hearing of the passing of Fidel Castro, Cuba’s dictator-emeritus, leftist politicians and celebrities wasted no time taking to social media to sing their sweet elegies for the Western Hemisphere’s most notorious tyrant.

Yet these tribute tweets, brimming with unwarranted admiration, soon encountered fierce resistance. There were those who quite sensibly pointed out Castro’s litany of human rights abuses. To speak approvingly of Castro, to eulogize him through euphemism, is to sanitize the legacy of a man who, in addition to committing egregious human rights violations, also tanked one of Latin America’s most historically prosperous economies.

But the Castro enthusiasts were also rebuked by a different sort of argument: the eruption of pure, unbridled celebration on the streets of Miami, the place where many exiled Cubans now call home.

While headlines and hashtags seemed to center mostly on the remarks of Barack Obama, Enrique Peña Nieto, Narendra Modi, and Justin Trudeau, one of the most benighted responses came from the feed of Black Lives Matter.

On Sunday, the organization published an essay, “Lessons from Fidel: Black Lives Matter and the Transition of El Comandante,” in which the leaders of the movement encourage their own to “push back against the rhetoric of the right and come to the defense of El Comandante” as they “aspire to build a world rooted in a vision of freedom and the peace that only comes with justice.”

Lessons from Fidel: Black Lives Matter and the Transition of El Comandante https://t.co/CYTcy6ReIa

— Black Lives Matter (@Blklivesmatter) November 27, 2016

Of course, there is much else wrong with Black Lives Matter.

But this whole business raises a question: while conservative politicians are required to renounce white supremacist organizations, and when they do (as Donald Trump did) are hectored for not denouncing them in sufficient feverish language, it’s just fine for liberal politicians to cozy up to Black Lives Matter.

As Barack Obama did.

And of course, the same corporations that engaged in smarmy virtue signalling about the Charlottesville riots (placing all the blame on the white nationalists, and none on Antifa) have pandered to and funded Black Lives Matter.

Of course, the hatred of police that Black Lives Matter engenders among blacks is ultimately harmful to the black community. But the liberal politicians and the corporate panderers don’t care. They have gotten the protection they wanted.

Hypocrisy: Is it OK to Want the President to Fail?

From MRC NewsBusters:

The Democratic Left is trying to pretend that Donald Trump wasn’t really elected President last year, with an unprecedented 67 U.S. Representatives boycotting Trump’s Inauguration after Congressman John Lewis told NBC that Trump was not “a legitimate President.”

But instead of scolding this divisive and unhelpful repudiation of a new President, the news media are enabling the sore-loser Left.

After Lewis announced his rejection of Trump, NBC’s Chuck Todd prodded him for more extreme action: “You believe this President is not legitimate. What would you tell young folks, young activists to do?”

And even though Trump hadn’t yet been inaugurated, Todd also pressed Lewis about impeachment: “Are you one of those that believe the impeachment process should begin?”

Contrast that with the news media’s hysterical reaction eight years ago when Rush Limbaugh said of incoming President Barack Obama and his ardently liberal agenda: “I hope he fails.”

It was a sentiment Limbaugh repeated a month later when he spoke at the annual CPAC conference: “What is so strange about being honest and saying, ‘I want Barack Obama to fail,’ if his mission is to restructure and reform this country so that capitalism and individual liberty are not its foundation? Why would I want that to succeed?”

Liberal reporters freaked out. CNN political analyst Bill Schneider said Limbaugh’s CPAC speech had “sinister” tones and had “crossed a line.” During a CNBC interview, host Mark Haines lectured Limbaugh that it was a “stupid and mean spirited thing to say,” an exchange that so tickled MSNBC host Keith Olbermann that he re-played it that night on his Countdown program.

Republican politicians were pressed to denounce Limbaugh. ABC’s Diane Sawyer asked John McCain to say he was “offended” by the remark (McCain demurred), while then-MSNBC anchor Norah O’Donnell scolded then-Indiana Representative Mike Pence: “Why don’t you feel like you could denounce something like that?”

On MSNBC in 2009, the failure to appreciate Obama was seen as treasonous, as Hardball host Chris Matthews asked viewers: “Does Rush Limbaugh hate this country?”

But last week, before Trump was sworn in, Matthews pressed Democratic Representative Maxine Waters if she would consider impeaching the not-yet-President. During Friday’s inauguration coverage, Matthews described Trump’s speech as “Hitlerian” and suggested Trump could use “Mussolini” tactics if he wanted to jettison his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as a White House advisor.

And over the next few days, ABC, CBS and NBC all provided heavy and positive coverage of an anti-Trump protest march that included speakers like Madonna seeming to suggest assassination: “I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House.”

The news media are obviously not demanding a consistent respect for the office of the U.S. Presidency. The most obvious explanation is that eight years ago most in the so-called “news” media wanted Barack Obama’s left-wing policies to succeed and were appalled by dissent.

Now, the media see themselves as part of the opposition to President Trump and his agenda to roll back Obama’s policies — and they hope he fails.

Of course, the two most common elements in Washington (and this includes the Washington press corps) are hydrogen and hypocrisy. So none of this is a surprise.

As we write this, the media are in a frenzy about Trump’s criticism of a Washington state judge who put a hold on his immigration pause. But attacking conservative Supreme Court judges over Citizens United or Heller or Hobby Lobby is just fine.

It’s not that only liberals are hypocritical, but in any subculture that is overwhelmingly dominated by liberals it is liberal hypocrisy that is going to run riot. And the people in that subculture, being so entirely surrounded by people who think the same way, can’t see it.

It’s much like academia, where one of our colleagues in Marquette’s Political Science Department told us he did not know what “political correctness” means.

Fish don’t know they are wet.

Narcissist

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Obama’s Power Grabs: Soon in the Hands Of Donald Trump

Want Something Else

Now We Are Going to Get Tough?

Russia invades Crimea: oh well
Russia shoots down airliner: mistakes happen
John Podesta falls for phishing scam: RESTART THE COLD WAR

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) December 29, 2016

And What Were You Expecting?

Escaped!

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Reverse Course

Wrong Direction

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