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From National Journal’s Jim Oliphant we have an early look at a left/liberal media reaction to Netanyahu’s speech before congress. 

Congressional Republicans haven’t had many victories in their lasting conflict with President Obama, but Tuesday brought one. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s somber, provocative speech to Congress checked all the boxes. 

It called into question the efficacy of any deal the administration might strike with Iran over its nuclear program; it likely renewed momentum for another round of Iranian sanctions on the Hill; it positioned the GOP politically as the party more worried about Israeli security, and, despite the White House’s best efforts, made the president appear petty and churlish. 

Obama, in an interview with Reuters, had dismissed the speech as a “distraction,” and aides made sure everyone knew he would be too busy to watch it. But if the president didn’t cast an eye at a TV, he might have been the only person in Washington not to. And that’s the problem.

For weeks, the White House has worked steadily to write the speech off as a thinly veiled Republican ploy to undermine the delicate negotiations with Iran. But network coverage treated it for what it was: the head of state of a critical ally delivering a controversial address on American soil. That served the interests of both House Speaker John Boehner, who was the impetus behind the speech, and Netanyahu, elevating both of them while key Democrats such as Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren stayed offstage. 

Netanyahu was hailed in the House chamber like a conquering hero. …

Charles Krauthammer writes on the fatal flaw in the Iran deal.

The news from the nuclear talks with Iran was already troubling. Iran was being granted the “right to enrich.” It would be allowed to retain and spin thousands of centrifuges. It could continue construction of the Arak plutonium reactor. Yet so thoroughly was Iran stonewalling International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors that just last Thursday the IAEA reported its concern “about the possible existence in Iran of undisclosed . . . development of a nuclear payload for a missile.”

Bad enough. Then it got worse: News leaked Monday of the elements of a “sunset clause.” President Obama had accepted the Iranian demand that any restrictions on its program be time-limited. After which, the mullahs can crank up their nuclear program at will and produce as much enriched uranium as they want.

Sanctions lifted. Restrictions gone. Nuclear development legitimized. Iran would reenter the international community, as Obama suggested in an interview in December, as “a very successful regional power.” A few years — probably around 10 — of good behavior and Iran would be home free.

The agreement thus would provide a predictable path to an Iranian bomb. Indeed, a flourishing path, with trade resumed, oil pumping and foreign investment pouring into a restored economy.

Meanwhile, Iran’s intercontinental ballistic missile program is subject to no restrictions at all. It’s not even part of these negotiations. …

Streetwise Prof posts on Iran negotiations.

John Kerry actually said this:”[Kerry] insisted the Obama administration’s diplomatic record with Iran entitles the U.S. to ‘the benefit of the doubt.’” Seriously? The administration that is synonymous with foreign policy failure-the Reset, Libya (including but not limited to Benghazi), Syria, Iraq/Isis, Yemen, to name just the most egregious examples-deserves the benefit of the doubt? Why exactly? Do we look that stupid? It’s like Hoover asking Dean Woermer to give Delta House one last chance at the end of Animal House, while chaos is rampant on the streets of Faber. Or the Apprentice asking the Sorcerer for just one more try with the brooms. He’ll nail it this time! Promise!

I wrote several posts eviscerating Obama’s risible, not to say mendacious, claim that oil transported via Keystone would be exported. Apparently the odor emanating from Obama’s full-of-it-iveness was so obvious that even reliable lefty “fact checker” Glenn Kessler couldn’t ignore it. So he awarded Obama’s Keystone claim a cherished Four Pinnochios. This was pretty good:

“When Obama first started making the claim that the crude oil in the Keystone pipeline would bypass the United States, we wavered between Three and Four Pinocchios — and strongly suggested he take the time to review the State Department report.

Clearly, the report remains unread.”

Of course it does! It’s not like the truth could trump politics, or anything.

Matthew Continetti posts on the Iran deal.

… What the opponents of a bad deal with Iran have witnessed over the last few months is the transference of Obama’s domestic political strategies to the international stage. A senior administration official is on record likening an Iranian nuclear agreement to Obamacare, and the comparison makes sense not only in the relative importance of the two policies to this president, not only because both policies are terrible and carry within them unforeseen consequences that will not be manifest for years, but also because of the way opponents of both policies are treated by the White House. If they are not ignored or dismissed, their motives are impugned. They are attacked personally, bullied, made examples of.

The alternative to a bad deal is not a better deal or tougher sanctions, Obama says, but war: “Congress should be aware that if this diplomatic solution fails, then the risks and likelihood that this ends up being at some point a military confrontation is heightened, and Congress will have to own that as well, and that will have to be debated by the American people.” The opponents of a nuclear Iran aren’t sincere, Obama explained to Senate Democrats last month, but are merely acting at the behest of their (Jewish) donors. Congress has no role to play in either approving of or enforcing a deal with Iran, John Kerry says, because any attempt to strengthen America’s hand or verify that Iran is in compliance would be like “throwing a grenade” into the meeting room.

As for Netanyahu, he is called “chickenshit” by anonymous sources, the national security adviser says his decision to address Congress is “destructive” of the U.S.-Israel alliance, Kerry tells Congress they shouldn’t listen to Bibi because he voiced wan support for regime change in Iraq (a war that Kerry voted to authorize), the congressional liaison rallies the Congressional Black Caucus to boycott the speech, and the administration leaks to the AP its strategy “to undercut” his speech and “blunt his message that a potential nuclear deal with Iran is bad for Israel and the world.” The strategy includes media appearances and the threat of a “pointed snub” of AIPAC, which has done everything it can over the last several years to ignore or acquiesce to President Obama’s anti-Israel foreign policy. …

Jonathan Tobin has more.

In an interview with Reuters intended as a rebuttal to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech to a joint session of Congress tomorrow, President Obama claims that his critics are not only wrong about his negotiating strategy with Iran, but that they lack one of their own other than to declare war. The attempt to depict his critics as warmongers is a classic Obama straw man. Opponents of his policy do have an alternative: returning to the policy of pressure and sanctions that the president discarded in 2013 which offered the only way, short of the use of force, to force Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions. But the real fallacy here is not so much the typical administration smears of critics. It is the fact that the president has an Iran strategy at all. Having made concession after concession to Iran in the last two years, there is little reason to believe that the current negotiations will stop Iran. To the contrary, the president appears set on a path that ensures that, sooner or later, Iran will get its bomb. …

… The president’s critics can’t be sure that their strategy of a return to sanctions and tough pressure on Iran aimed at bringing the regime to its knees will succeed. But, despite the president’s claims, he never tried it before he prematurely abandoned pressure for appeasement. But we can be almost certain that a strategy that aims at entente with Iran is guaranteed to fail miserably. Indeed, it is not so much a recipe for failure as it is one for a completely different approach to Iran that is ready to acquiesce to their demands.

That is a position that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu does well to protest tomorrow in his speech to Congress. So should Democrats and Republicans who take their pledges to stop Iran more seriously than the president.

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Kevin Williamson posts on growing student loan defaults and the leftist politicians like Liz Warren who make excuses for deadbeats.

… American households have been getting their act together on debt, at least a little bit, since the financial crisis and the subsequent recession. Credit-card defaults, after spiking around 2009, have been in decline, as have mortgage defaults and car-loan defaults. Home-equity loans took a little longer to get straightened out, but defaults on those are in decline, too, and have been for some time. (Much more on all that from the New York Fed here.) But one kind of debt default remains stubbornly on the rise: student loans, which in total add up to more than all U.S. credit-card debt and are much more likely to be in default than any other major debt category, far outstripping credit cards in the No. 2 default position.

On Monday, The New Yorker offered a sympathetic report (“A student-loan debt revolt begins”) about 15 former students of Corinthian Colleges, a dodgy and now largely defunct operator of for-profit schools, who intend to stop repaying their student loans as a matter of principle. “They believe that they have both ethical and legal grounds for what appears to be an unprecedented collective action against the debt charged to students who attended Corinthian schools,” writes Vauhini Vara, “and they are also making a broader statement about the trillion dollars of student debt owed throughout the country.” Senator Warren has called on the federal government to simply discharge the debts of former Corinthian students. An Occupy-affiliated organization called Debt Collective is pressing a similar agenda.

What does not seem to have occurred to Senator Warren, to Debt Collective, to the Corinthian 15, or to Vauhini Vara and the editors of The New Yorker is this: The students in question do not owe money to Corinthian Colleges. They owe money to third parties, those being private lenders and the federal government. As an instrument of protest, they might as well stop making their car payments, skip their rent, or boost mocacchinos from Starbucks — the people who lent them money are no more responsible for Corinthian’s woes than are their landlords and baristas.

This is classic leftist misdirection. …

Politico says another member of the left media has to apologize for a Scott Walker hit piece.

Another major media outlet has apologized after getting a story about Scott Walker wrong. Last week, it was the New York Times; now, it’s The Daily Beast.

The Daily Beast has retracted an article from one of its college columnists that claimed that the Wisconsin governor’s budget would cut sexual assault reporting from the state’s universities.

The post, published Friday, cited a report from Jezebel that wrongly interpreted a section of the state budget to mean that all assault reporting requirements were to get cut altogether.

In fact, the University of Wisconsin system requested the deletion of the requirements to get rid of redundancy, as it already provides similar information to the federal government, UW System spokesman Alex Hummel told The Associated Press on Friday. …

Politico also has the story of behind the scenes chaos at the Clinton Foundation. It is beginning to look like the Clinton’s did not raise a brass knuckled street-fighter like themselves. This is a tad long, but an interesting look at the Clinton Foundation scam.

In December, the board of the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation approved a salary of more than $395,000, plus bonus, for its Yale-educated CEO, Eric Braverman, while voting to extend his board term through 2017, according to sources familiar with the arrangement. Braverman, who had worked with Chelsea Clinton at the prestigious McKinsey & Company consultancy, had been brought in with the former first daughter’s support to help impose McKinsey-like management rigor to a foundation that had grown into a $2 billion charitable powerhouse. 

But last month, only weeks after the board’s show of support and just a year-and-a-half after Braverman arrived, he abruptly resigned, and sources tell Politico his exit stemmed partly from a power struggle inside the foundation between and among the coterie of Clinton loyalists who have surrounded the former president for decades and who helped start and run the foundation. Some, including the president’s old Arkansas lawyer Bruce Lindsey, who preceded Braverman as CEO, raised concerns directly to Bill Clinton about the reforms implemented by Braverman, according to sources, and felt themselves marginalized by the growing influence of Chelsea Clinton and the new CEO she had helped recruit. 

The previously untold saga of Braverman’s brief, and occasionally fraught tenure trying to navigate the Clintons’ insular world highlights the challenges the family has faced trying to impose rigorous oversight onto a vast global foundation that relies on some of the same loyal mega-donors Hillary Clinton will need for the presidential run sources have said she is all but certain to launch later this year.

Already, a spate of recent news stories in Politico and elsewhere have highlighted questions about the foundation’s aggressive fundraising both before and during Braverman’s tenure, including the news that the foundation had been accepting contributions from foreign governments with lax oversight from the State Department when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state; the foundation has been Clinton’s main public platform since she left State in February 2013. 

The hiring a few months later of Braverman, who had been a partner in McKinsey’s Washington office, was seen as validation of Chelsea Clinton’s view that the foundation needed to address recommendations from a 2011 audit for tighter governance and budgeting, as well as more comprehensive policies to vet donors and avoid conflicts of interest. …

… Chelsea Clinton’s rise at times has seemed to threaten some veteran Clinton aides who had carved out influential – and lucrative – positions after long service with her parents. She is blamed in some quarters for marginalizing both Lindsey and Doug Band, who rose from the president’s body man to build and help run the foundation’s Clinton Global Initiative. A third Clinton veteran, Ira Magaziner, saw his portfolio at the foundation diminished during Braverman’s tenure, and sources say Magaziner’s role remains under scrutiny. 

Magaziner, who was a Rhodes Scholar with Bill Clinton in the late 1960s and spearheaded Hillary Clinton’s botched healthcare reform push in the 1990s, was paid $415,000 in foundation salary and consulting fees in 2013 to help run two programs, the Clinton Climate Initiative and the Clinton Health Access Initiative. Magaziner left the climate project late last year after Braverman brought in new leadership, but he remains as CEO of the health initiative. The health group’s board – which includes Magaziner – at the end of last year voted unanimously to initiate an internal governance review by the New York law firm Simpson Thacher, according to foundation officials. 

Sources say the review was expected to recommend management improvements. But in a statement sent on behalf of Magaziner, the initiative’s spokeswoman Maura Daley said the review found good fiscal health and “significant programmatic success over the years” and that the initiative’s board, in receiving the report at its last meeting, “expressed strong support for the successful leadership of CHAI.” …

In what has turned into another Hillary day, Jennifer Rubin posts on HRC’s bore-a-thon.

There is only one presidential contender who has nothing to say, at least nothing new or that hasn’t been said for years by others. Speaking to a bunch of privileged, wealthy women in Silicon Valley, Hillary Clinton proclaimed her concern for gender equality and the middle class (generally not defined as people making six figures with stock options). The Post quotes her as saying: “We have to restore economic growth with rising wages for the vast majority of Americans, and we have to restore trust and cooperation within our political system so that we can act like the great country we are.” No — really?! …

And Michael Goodwin says Hillary’s blundering is threatening her chances.

A popular theme on Planet Clinton is that poor Hillary is always in mortal danger of being undone by her charming cad of a hubby. “She can’t control him” is how insiders express their fear that Bubba will have a bimbo eruption and crash the coronation.

On a long list of possibilities, that scenario must be included. But my reading of the Clinton Chronicles points to a much bigger threat to the restoration of the family monarchy.

That would be the stumbling performance of the lady herself.

On top of the tactical blunders, there was an overarching reason why sure victory eluded Hillary Clinton in 2008. She simply was not a very appealing candidate, offering neither charisma nor a compelling message. She ran with a sense of entitlement that the Oval Office was owed to her.

If anything has changed, it’s a well-kept secret. Already, her run this time is marked by mistakes, gaffes and reports of ethical corner-cutting, which adds up to watching the same bad movie twice. …

JenRub also posts on the Dems “bizarre” faith in Hillary.

… If Jeb Bush’s last name was Smith, he might be the hands down leader for the GOP nomination, but if her last name wasn’t Clinton, would she be a lock for the nomination or even the favorite? This is where the Democrats’ attachment to her becomes mystifying. If they want a woman nominee, they have qualified women out there. If they want someone more reliably liberal and more adept on the trail, they could find those candidates also. And yet they cling to Clinton for dear life. Why?

One explanation is that they think she is disingenuous and once in office will show her true liberal stripes. Maybe, but it sure would be safer to find someone who admits to being liberal, has a liberal record and isn’t in league with the left’s economic villains. Alternatively, they might think she is a political behemoth, able to roll over whatever Republican comes her way. Anything to keep the White House, right? But if you look at the items above plus her age and political skills isn’t she a weak candidate?  Frankly, Democrats are acting like Republicans — resigned to give the nomination to the next in line and clueless about her inability to connect with voters. The GOP hopes they don’t figure this out until it’s too late. So if anyone asks, she’s a fabulous candidate, the most qualified person ever!

Ignoring the climate change dreck in this article from BBC News, it is interesting to read about the 5 inch higher sea level north of New York that was caused by a series of storms five years ago. As an example of how wind can push the ocean around remember the “perfect storm” of the fall of 1991. Over a period of four to five days a monster storm sat off the Canadian Maritime provinces. At that time, Pickerhead was spending a lot of time traveling to Aruba for windsurfing off the northwest leeward coast where the trade winds blew across a narrow part of the island creating a windblown flat water paradise. At the time of the perfect storm a friend in Aruba told of incoming surf and three foot above normal tides. This was happening, because the storm off the Canadian coast was blowing the water to Aruba which is just off the coast of Venezuela. That is a distance of almost 2,500 miles. So it is not an earth shattering global warming event to have a series of storms push a lot of water against the New EnglandCoast. 

Sea levels north of New York City rose by 128mm in two years, according to a report in the journal, Nature Communications.

Coastal areas will need to prepare for short term and extreme sea level events, say US scientists.

Climate models suggest extreme sea level rises will become more common this century.

“The extreme sea level rise event during 2009-10 along the northeast coast of North America is unprecedented during the past century,” Prof Jianjun Yin of the University of Arizona told BBC News.

“Statistical analysis indicates that it is a 1-in-850 year event.” …

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Roger Simon posts on the new new new anti-Semitism.

Prostitution may be the world’s oldest profession, but anti-Semitism is probably the world’s oldest bigotry. It’s come and gone and come and gone and then come and gone again since the days of the pharaohs.

Well, maybe it was never really gone, but, like cancer, it was in remission.  Born at the end of World War II, I was one of those lucky Jews to be born in a period of remission as never before seen, particularly in the United States.

It’s over.  And how it’s over.  You don’t need a poll to tell you that, but a new one just conducted by TrinityCollege and the LouisD.BrandeisCenter for Human Rights Under Law tells us that 54 percent of self-identified Jewish students in 55 college across the country experienced or witnessed anti-Semitism during the 2013-2014 school year. Whoa! Welcome to the University of Berlin. …

We now have a post by David Harsanyi saying there’s nothing unpatriotic about challenging the president on Iran. Just because it follows Roger Simon’s essay on the new new new anti-Semitism, it does not follow we’re suggesting the same for Barry. He is ignorant, but not necessarily anti-Semitic. He is though, anti-British; which is a perfect example of his ignorance. One of the finest episodes in human history was the success of the anti-slavery movement which started in England with people like William Wilberforce. The eradication of an institution that had been part of history for thousands of years in just a few decades was a major accomplishment. The president’s removal of Churchill’s bust from the oval office upon his first day in office illustrates his ideological shortsightedness, historical stupidity, and the fact his mind was warped by the ”legends” of both his father and his grandfather. That screed aside, we can proceed with Harsanyi.

… And for many on the Left, a nuclear Iran is seen as inevitable or innocuous. James Fallows at The Atlantic has written a string of confused pieces that suggests Iran is not a threat to Israel and argues that anyone attempting to weaken the president’s position in the Iranian negotiations is exhibiting dual loyalties. (You’ll note that supporters of the Jewish State are either cowards who clap for Israeli prime ministers because they are compelled to do so by dark forces, or cowards who are under the spell of wicked special interests.)

Considering Fallows’ views on the Iraq War, he should probably know better. Devotion to Obama is not the same as loyalty to your country. The opposition party, in fact, has a responsibility to disrupt the president’s agenda if they truly believe it’s the wrong path for the nation. This is why we have political parties. And this is why I’m pretty sure many anti-war liberals believe that the Hillary Clintons and John Kerrys of the world failed the country leading up to the Iraq War.

Whereas Obama looks to be comfortable with the expansion of Iranian power with proxies in Syria and Lebanon, our allies in Israel may not feel the same way.

And, since I brought it up, Kerry sure did offer us a draw-dropper yesterday: “The prime minister was profoundly forward-leaning and outspoken about the importance of invading Iraq under George W. Bush,” said former presidential candidate. “We all know what happened with that decision.”

Yes, Netanyahu supported the Iraq War, but he did not send Americans to fight–nor will his upcoming speech. Kerry, on the other hand, engaged in a cynical voted for/voted against charade driven by his own political ambitions. But there is a bigger falsehood–let’s call it presumption–here. Critics of Netanyahu act as if opposing Obama’s Iranian deal is tantamount to declaring war on Iran. In the long run, allowing Iran to become nuclear power may well mean war. We don’t know. …

More from Jennifer Rubin.

… Frankly, the administration’s snit over the Netanyahu speech has rightly been seen as abject panic. The world leader most credible on Iran from the country that 70 percent of Americans support is coming to debunk the plan to let Iran keep its nuclear infrastructure — in direct contravention of the administration’s public statements and private assurances to our allies in the region. The administration’s lame effort to discredit the prime minister and start a partisan rumpus — led by two of the least credible foreign policy officials in recent memory (Susan Rice of “it was a video” fame on the Benghazi attack and John Kerry, whose previously threatened that the United States could not protect Israel unless it made a peace deal) — is nearly as pathetic as its negotiation posture with Iran. It is no wonder that the administration refuses to concede a deal must be approved by Congress. With each passing day, the administration’s credibility slips deeper into the abyss and the likelihood of bipartisan rejection of the Obama-Clinton-Kerry Iran diplomatic debacle increases.

And Streetwise Professor spotted more administration foolishness.

John Kerry has criticized Russian actions in and lies about Ukraine. He hinted that further sanctions could be forthcoming, and that the head of the FSB could be targeted.

Wait a minute. Just last week the head of the FSB was considered a worthy participant in the debate on the subject of terrorism: he headed the Russian delegation to the Countering Violent Extremism Summit. How ludicrous, and schizo, is that? The guy goes from interlocutor to persona non grata in a period of mere days. To quote Casey Stengel: can’t anybody here play this game?

Any sanctions forthcoming will likely have the opposite of the intended effect. Putin will interpret them as demonstrating a lack of seriousness, a token response meant to keep up appearances, rather than as a serious challenge. He will view such actions as a green light, not a yellow let alone a flashing red. He will understand that he faces an irresolute, incoherent, and timorous opposition, and will act accordingly.

For a treat, we have an interview with Camille Paglia in America Magazine. This wanders some, but as with anything associated with Paglia there are  gems.

… Identifying yourself as a “dissident feminist,” you often seem more at home with classical Greek and Roman paganism than with postmodern academia. How has this reality affected your public and professional relationships?

I feel lucky to have taught primarily at art schools, where the faculty are active practitioners of the arts and crafts. I have very little contact with American academics, who are pitifully trapped in a sterile career system that has become paralyzed by political correctness. University faculties nationwide have lost power to an ever-expanding bureaucracy of administrators, whose primary concern is the institution’s contractual relationship with tuition-paying parents. You can cut the demoralized faculty atmosphere with a knife when you step foot on any elite campus. With a few stellar exceptions, the only substantive discourse that I ever have these days is with academics, intellectuals, and journalists abroad.

In your view, what’s wrong with American feminism today, and what can it do to improve?

After the great victory won by my insurgent, pro-sex, pro-fashion wing of feminism in the 1990s, American and British feminism has amazingly collapsed backward again into whining, narcissistic victimology. As in the hoary old days of Gloria Steinem and her Stalinist cohorts, we are endlessly subjected to the hackneyed scenario of history as a toxic wasteland of vicious male oppression and gruesome female suffering. College campuses are hysterically portrayed as rape extravaganzas where women are helpless fluffs with no control over their own choices and behavior. …

John Fund makes sense of the Net Neutrality/Internet fight.

Today’s vote by a bitterly divided Federal Communications Commission that the Internet should be regulated as a public utility is the culmination of a decade-long battle by the Left. Using money from George Soros and liberal foundations that totaled at least $196 million, radical activists finally succeeded in ramming through “net neutrality,” or the idea that all data should be transmitted equally over the Internet. The final push involved unprecedented political pressure exerted by the Obama White House on FCC chairman Tom Wheeler, head of an ostensibly independent regulatory body.

“Net neutrality’s goal is to empower the federal government to ration and apportion Internet bandwidth as it sees fit, and to thereby control the Internet’s content,” says Phil Kerpen, an anti-net-neutrality activist from the group American Commitment.

The courts have previously ruled the FCC’s efforts to impose “net neutrality” out of bounds, so the battle isn’t over. But for now, the FCC has granted itself enormous power to micromanage the largely unrestrained Internet. …