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Israel’s defense minister commits the faux pas of telling the truth about Kerry’s efforts with Palestinians. Breitbart has the story.
… Ya’alon added: “In reality, there have been no negotiations between us and the Palestinians for all these months –but rather between us and the Americans. The only thing that can ‘save us’ is for John Kerry to win a Nobel Prize and leave us in peace.” …
Jonathan Tobin posts at length on Moshe Yaalon’s outburst.
Give Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu some credit. In his first term as Israel’s leader in the 1990s, he might well have issued a statement like the one attributed to Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon yesterday in which the former general trashed U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and damned the security plan that he presented to Israel this month as “not worth the paper it’s written on.” Since returning to the prime minister’s office in 2009 Netanyahu has done his best to keep the relationship with Washington from overheating. If there have been a series of scrapes with the Obama administration, that is largely the fault of the president’s desire to pick policy fights with him and the prime minister has done his best not to overreact. No matter how wrong Israel’s leaders may think their American counterparts are, little good comes from public spats. As Netanyahu knows, the only ones who benefit from exposing the daylight between the two countries’ positions are the Palestinians and other foes.
But apparently Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon hasn’t gotten the memo about not telling off the Americans. In an apparently unguarded moment, the former general spouted off about Kerry, the peace process, and the Palestinians yesterday, and the subsequent report in Yediot Ahronot published in English on their Ynetnews.com site brought down a firestorm on the Israeli government. Though Yaalon walked back his comments in a statement to the media, he did not deny the accuracy of the original Yediot story. This indiscretion won’t help Netanyahu in his dealings with either Obama or Kerry. It is especially foolish coming from a cabinet minister whose department has worked closely with the administration on security measures throughout the last five years to Israel’s benefit in spite of the political differences between the governments. But leaving aside the diplomatic harm he has done his country, honest observers must admit that what Yaalon said was true. …
Uniting left and right, A NY Times OpEd says the Iran policy is doomed to failure. If Kerry can find another stupid policy in the region, he can have a Mid East “hat trick.”
A great deal of diplomatic attention over the next few months will be focused on whether the temporary nuclear deal with Iran can be transformed into a full-blown accord. President Obama has staked the success of his foreign policy on this bold gamble. But discussion about the nuclear deal has diverted attention from an even riskier bet that Obama has placed: the idea that Iran can become a cooperative partner in regional security.
Although they won’t say so publicly, Mr. Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry surely dream of a “Nixon to China” masterstroke. …
… The Obama strategy is breathtakingly ambitious. It is also destined to fail.
First, it ignores the obvious fact that, unlike China at the time of President Richard M. Nixon’s diplomacy in the 1970s, Iran does not share a common enemy that would force it to unite with America. Though Iran’s proxies are fighting Sunni extremists in a number of theaters, Iran itself has cooperated with Al Qaeda and other Sunni extremists, such as Hamas and the Taliban, when it has served its interests to do so. Iran’s rulers simply do not regard Al Qaeda as an existential threat on a par with the “Great Satan” (as they see the United States). By contrast, Mao did see the Soviet Union as a sufficient threat to justify an alliance with the “capitalist imperialists” in Washington.
The second major problem is that Iran has always harbored dreams of regional hegemony. There is no sign that the election of the “moderate” cleric Hassan Rouhani as president has changed anything. …
He put the Moran into moron. Roll Call says Virginia Dem Moran will finally leave congress.
Senior appropriator and progressive stalwart James P. Moran will step down at the end of this year, making him the third House Democrat in just three days to announce his retirement. …
… Over the years Moran has served on Capitol Hill, his professional accomplishments were sometimes overshadowed by personal scandals. Brash and occasionally outspoken to a fault, he has shoved members leaving the House floor, suggested that the Jewish community pushed for the U.S. invasion in Iraq in 2003 and possibly squandered a small fortune in the stock market. In 2012, his son resigned as field director for his father’s re-election campaign after he was caught on camera advocating voter fraud.
But Moran has always been a team player in the Democratic power structure, trusted by leadership to take reliable, liberal, party-line votes. …
Moran’s son was featured in Chris Cillizza’s Worst Week in Washington in October 2012 when he was caught in a James O’Keefe sting.
When approached at a Cosi by a total stranger pushing a vote-fraud scheme, be very, very leery.
Pat Moran, son of Northern Virginia Rep. Jim Moran (D), learned that the hard way this past week when conservative activists caught him on video providing advice about how one person might be able to cast ballots on behalf of a number of people in next month’s election.
In the video, Moran, the field director for his father’s campaign, appears initially uneasy about the prospect of vote fraud but goes on to suggest that forged utility bills could be used as identification. He adds that the bills must “look good” to fool poll workers. …
Speaking of DC lowlifes, Charles Hurt has more on “Duty.”
… Support would be to never send soldiers to die for a mission not worth dying for. As secretary of defense and president of the United States, that would be your responsibility to determine. Or “duty,” if you like. If they are dying for something you honestly believe the commander in chief does not believe in, then you have a duty to quit and make known your grave concerns about such treasonous leadership.
Mr. Gates also reveals Washington’s worst-kept secret of the past four decades: Mr. Biden has been wrong about every major foreign policy issue of his time. Such ineptitude would get anybody fired from Macy’s shoe department. But in Washington, it makes Mr. Biden the reigning expert on foreign affairs and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for years.
Mr. Gates also smears Mrs. Clinton by relaying a conversation she had with Mr. Obama in which both of them acknowledged that they opposed sending reinforcement troops to Iraq when the fighting grew particularly nasty because they were afraid support might hurt their political careers.
Still, Mr. Gates declares that Mrs. Clinton would make a fine president. And, in an effort to be “even-handed,” says so would Mr. Biden.
Dear God, save America!
If you’ve been wondering about the fuss over the internet court decision, we have the skinny from a WSJ OpEd.
A federal appeals court in Washington slapped the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday for overstepping its legal authority by trying to regulate Internet access. The FCC is now a two-time loser in court in its net-neutrality efforts. Has the government learned its lesson, or will the agency take a third stab at regulating the Internet? The answer to that question will affect the Internet’s growth in the 21st century.
The FCC’s quest to regulate the Internet began in 2010, when the commission first promulgated rules for net neutrality. The rules, proponents argue, are needed to police Internet “on-ramps” (Internet service providers) ostensibly to ensure that they stay “open.” To accomplish this, some want the FCC to subject the Internet to ancient communications laws designed for extinct phone and railroad monopolies.
But the trouble is, nothing needs fixing. The Internet has remained open and accessible without FCC micromanagement since it entered public life in the 1990s. And more regulation could produce harmful results, such as reduced infrastructure investment, stunted innovation, slower speeds and higher prices for consumers. The FCC never bothered to study the impact that such intervention might have on the broadband market before leaping to regulate. Nor did it consider the ample consumer-protection laws that already exist. The government’s meddling has been driven more by ideology and a 2008 campaign promise by then-Sen. Barack Obama than by reality. …
MIT scientist dumps on Deval Patrick, MA Gov.
While Gov. Deval Patrick and others painted a dire picture of what global warming might do to us, others are more skeptical.
MIT Professor Richard Lindzen is a leading international expert on climate change.
“The changes that have occurred due to global warning are too small to account for,” he told WBZ-TV. “It has nothing to do with global warming, it has to do with where we live.”
Lindzen endorses sensible preparedness and environmental protection, but sees what he terms “catastrophism” in the climate change horror stories.
“Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. The opportunities for taxation, for policies, for control, for crony capitalism are just immense, you can see their eyes bulge,” he says.
“Even many of the people who are supportive of sounding the global warning alarm, back off from catastophism,” Lindzen said. “It’s the politicians and the green movement that like to portray catastrophe.”
The earth is staying in balance. Business Insider reports on a heat wave in Australia.
Australian authorities warned Tuesday of some of the worst fire danger since a 2009 inferno which killed 173 people, with most of the continent’s southeast sweltering through a major heatwave.
Victoria state, where the so-called Black Saturday firestorm flattened entire villages in 2009 and destroyed more than 2,000 homes, was again bracing for extreme fire weather.
“These next four days promise to be amongst the most significant that we have faced in Victoria since Black Saturday,” said acting state premier Peter Ryan.
Tens of thousands of firefighters were on standby, and 1,290 brigades were in a “state of high preparedness”, he added, with the peak danger day expected on Friday when very strong winds are forecast. …
The Atlantic has some good news; we’re not getting zapped by lightning like in the past.
In the first half of the 20th century, hundreds of Americans died each year from lightning strikes. The data is messy, but in the years from about 1920 to the middle of the 1940s, about 400 people were killed by lightning annually.
Last year, 23 did, the fewest on record. Other recent years have had a similarly small number of lightning fatalities, with 28 in 2012, and 26 in 2011, the previous record.
These numbers are all the more remarkable considering how the population of the United States has exploded over the same time period. Measured on a per person basis, the decline in lightning deaths over the last century is staggering, falling from about 3 or 4 annual deaths per million Americans, to fewer than 0.1 in recent years. …
Andrew Malcolm tops off our week with late night humor.
Fallon: President Obama invited unemployed Americans to the White House for a discussion on income inequality. Because if there’s one way to show sympathy for the unemployed, it’s to have them over to a giant white mansion where you get to live for free.
Leno: That MSNBC anchor has apologized for making fun of a Mitt Romney grandchild. She said from now on before she goes on the air, she’ll remind herself that some people may actually be watching MSNBC.
Letterman: People come up to me all the time with their questions. They say, ‘Dave, why is it so cold out?’ And I reply, ‘It’s the chill, that Arctic blast coming off Michelle Obama.’
Leno: In the movie “Wolf of Wall Street” they say the F-word 506 times, breaking the old record of 505 Obama set when he heard about Robert Gates’ new book. …
Don’t miss the cowboy-in-training staring down a Brahma bull.