Iran Is Weak and Soleimani Is Still Dead

If I learned anything growing up in the Bronx in the 1970s and 1980s it is this: When someone says they are going to kill you, you should believe them.  Iranian leaders have been vowing, “Death to America” for four decades.  Successive presidents have striven mightily to not only ignore their declaration but also to maintain it lacked the solemnity of true intent. 

Why else would the smartest president ever, Barack Obama, through his sham legacy foreign policy accomplishment, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agree to cede Iran a secured path to developing nuclear weapons?

As a corollary, it is almost an aphorism to state that when someone keeps pushing, at some point, you must push back, or attrition will be your fate.

In this, the simplicity in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s combination statement/oath uttered in reference to an obscure phone call about military aid can’t be beaten.  He said, “Nobody pushed me.” 

Trump exercises great forbearance when it comes to military response.  He did so with Iran.  Even as it ratcheted up its provocations, he exercised due discretion.  But Iran crossed a line, and nobody pushes Trump.  When Iran killed an American, Trump killed dozens.  In response, they tried to overrun our embassy and Soleimani became a smear on a road to historical infamy.

Qassem Soleimani was in a Baghdad meeting with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the leader of Kataib Hezb’allah, his new pet militia — mere miles away from our embassy, and immediately subsequent to the militia’s test-assault.  They were there to plot and execute more terrorist attacks on America.  Democrats ignore this.

One of these planned attacks was rumored to be a full-scale takeover of the embassy, as in Iran in 1979.  Incidentally, 1979 was the year Iran began its war on America.

Democrats like to pretend Obama didn’t spend eight years burning down the world:  Barry invited Russia back into Syria (after a 25-year absence); gave Syria to Iran and Russia; destroyed Libya (without congressional authorization); gave Iraq to Iran, while guaranteeing Iran a nuclear weapon (in a few years) through the JCPOA non-treaty; as well as financing its worldwide terrorism network (run by Soleimani) with a $150 billion gift.  Plus, $1.4 billion in pallets of cash was paid as ransom for the return nine kidnapped and humiliated American sailors. 

They also ignore that it was Barry who opened the floodgate of “refugees” and potential terrorists, now raping and pillaging their way across Europe, perhaps culturally transforming the continent forever (Barry was always big on “transformation”).

It’s almost as if Obama was working for Iran.

Trump’s assassination of Soleimani and Muhandis was a brilliant tactical move.  Done on a quiet road near the Baghdad International Airport to minimize collateral damage, it was a decapitation of Iran’s military; it was Iran’s “Yamamoto Moment.”  

Soleimani commanded the IRGC’s Quds Force, which is the primary instrument of control in Iran’s attempt at regional hegemony by establishing a Shiite Crescent land bridge to the Mediterranean Sea, as well as its weapon of choice to foment terror and exercise control over its satrapies, Lebanon, Syria, and now, Iraq.

General David Petraeus called Soleimani “our most significant and evil adversary.”  He also said Soleimani’s elimination was bigger than bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

After all, Baghdadi died like a dog in a cave after the demise of his “caliphate” and bin Laden was in hiding, spending his final days surfing the net for kiddy porn.  Soleimani was king of the terrorist world.  Yet as “austere” and “revered” Soleimani might have been, it didn’t matter to Trump, he counterpunched the Quds leader down the chute to hell. 

Trump does not lead from behind, he kicks behind.  With the killing of Soleimani, Trump has given notice to the mullahs that there will be no more tit-for-tat because from now on, America will do the escalating.

Somewhere across the globe Ali Khamenei and Kim Jong-un are destroying the SIM cards from their cell phones.

Of course, the Democrats and the media, having copyrighted the slogan, “Death to America” didn’t see it that way.  The Democrats’ sole interest is partisan political advantage, no matter how damaging to America.  And the media’s sole interest is advancing the interests of the Democratic Party.

They are up in arms about Congress not being notified before the attack.  Yet, everyone knows that had Trump notified Congress, there would have been several Democrats on the phone to the ayatollah within minutes. 

They’ve called the killing a “dangerous escalation.”  Dismissing the fact that Iran has been waging war on America for 40 years, they claim America will now be subject to vicious Iranian reprisals.

Spengler says it best:

“Iran revealed part of its strategic capability in September when Iranian infiltrators used ground-hugging cruise missiles and autonomous drones to destroy Aramco facilities in Saudi Arabia. Iran tested its “Khorramshahr “ missile with an estimated 2,000-kilometer range in 2017. It is not known how effective the weapon is or how many Iran possesses. It is possible that Iran has enough ordnance to swamp American anti-missile defenses at its Doha airbase or to overcome the air defenses on an American warship in the Persian Gulf.”

He added this:

“[Iran’s] September attack on Aramco facilities in Saudi Arabia exposed the weakness of US air defenses. The Patriot anti-missile system can’t shoot anything flying lower than 60 meters, and Iran has low-flying cruise missiles. A successful strike against Doha certainly figures in American calculations.”

But he also noted the potential options available to Trump:

“If Iran were to attack Doha, America’s response likely would be devastating. Two dozen missiles or bombing sorties could wipe out Iran’s economy in a matter of hours. Fewer than a dozen power plants generate 60% of Iran’s electricity, and eight refineries produce 80% of its distillates. A single missile strike could disable each of these facilities, and bunker-buster bombs of the kind that Israel used last month in Lebanon would entirely destroy them. Without much effort, the US could destroy the Port of Kharg from which Iran exports 90% of its hydrocarbons.”

Iran is a bully.  Like every bully, it was testing America’s limits — pushing to see how far it could go.  They ate Obama’s lunch for eight years — they expected to do the same with Trump.  There is a valuable lesson from the investment realm Iran would do well to heed:  “Past performance is no guarantee of future results.”

And — Trump is no Barack Obama.

Please follow the author on Twitter @williamlgensert

If I learned anything growing up in the Bronx in the 1970s and 1980s it is this: When someone says they are going to kill you, you should believe them.  Iranian leaders have been vowing, “Death to America” for four decades.  Successive presidents have striven mightily to not only ignore their declaration but also to maintain it lacked the solemnity of true intent. 

Why else would the smartest president ever, Barack Obama, through his sham legacy foreign policy accomplishment, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agree to cede Iran a secured path to developing nuclear weapons?

As a corollary, it is almost an aphorism to state that when someone keeps pushing, at some point, you must push back, or attrition will be your fate.

In this, the simplicity in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s combination statement/oath uttered in reference to an obscure phone call about military aid can’t be beaten.  He said, “Nobody pushed me.” 

Trump exercises great forbearance when it comes to military response.  He did so with Iran.  Even as it ratcheted up its provocations, he exercised due discretion.  But Iran crossed a line, and nobody pushes Trump.  When Iran killed an American, Trump killed dozens.  In response, they tried to overrun our embassy and Soleimani became a smear on a road to historical infamy.

Qassem Soleimani was in a Baghdad meeting with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the leader of Kataib Hezb’allah, his new pet militia — mere miles away from our embassy, and immediately subsequent to the militia’s test-assault.  They were there to plot and execute more terrorist attacks on America.  Democrats ignore this.

One of these planned attacks was rumored to be a full-scale takeover of the embassy, as in Iran in 1979.  Incidentally, 1979 was the year Iran began its war on America.

Democrats like to pretend Obama didn’t spend eight years burning down the world:  Barry invited Russia back into Syria (after a 25-year absence); gave Syria to Iran and Russia; destroyed Libya (without congressional authorization); gave Iraq to Iran, while guaranteeing Iran a nuclear weapon (in a few years) through the JCPOA non-treaty; as well as financing its worldwide terrorism network (run by Soleimani) with a $150 billion gift.  Plus, $1.4 billion in pallets of cash was paid as ransom for the return nine kidnapped and humiliated American sailors. 

They also ignore that it was Barry who opened the floodgate of “refugees” and potential terrorists, now raping and pillaging their way across Europe, perhaps culturally transforming the continent forever (Barry was always big on “transformation”).

It’s almost as if Obama was working for Iran.

Trump’s assassination of Soleimani and Muhandis was a brilliant tactical move.  Done on a quiet road near the Baghdad International Airport to minimize collateral damage, it was a decapitation of Iran’s military; it was Iran’s “Yamamoto Moment.”  

Soleimani commanded the IRGC’s Quds Force, which is the primary instrument of control in Iran’s attempt at regional hegemony by establishing a Shiite Crescent land bridge to the Mediterranean Sea, as well as its weapon of choice to foment terror and exercise control over its satrapies, Lebanon, Syria, and now, Iraq.

General David Petraeus called Soleimani “our most significant and evil adversary.”  He also said Soleimani’s elimination was bigger than bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

After all, Baghdadi died like a dog in a cave after the demise of his “caliphate” and bin Laden was in hiding, spending his final days surfing the net for kiddy porn.  Soleimani was king of the terrorist world.  Yet as “austere” and “revered” Soleimani might have been, it didn’t matter to Trump, he counterpunched the Quds leader down the chute to hell. 

Trump does not lead from behind, he kicks behind.  With the killing of Soleimani, Trump has given notice to the mullahs that there will be no more tit-for-tat because from now on, America will do the escalating.

Somewhere across the globe Ali Khamenei and Kim Jong-un are destroying the SIM cards from their cell phones.

Of course, the Democrats and the media, having copyrighted the slogan, “Death to America” didn’t see it that way.  The Democrats’ sole interest is partisan political advantage, no matter how damaging to America.  And the media’s sole interest is advancing the interests of the Democratic Party.

They are up in arms about Congress not being notified before the attack.  Yet, everyone knows that had Trump notified Congress, there would have been several Democrats on the phone to the ayatollah within minutes. 

They’ve called the killing a “dangerous escalation.”  Dismissing the fact that Iran has been waging war on America for 40 years, they claim America will now be subject to vicious Iranian reprisals.

Spengler says it best:

“Iran revealed part of its strategic capability in September when Iranian infiltrators used ground-hugging cruise missiles and autonomous drones to destroy Aramco facilities in Saudi Arabia. Iran tested its “Khorramshahr “ missile with an estimated 2,000-kilometer range in 2017. It is not known how effective the weapon is or how many Iran possesses. It is possible that Iran has enough ordnance to swamp American anti-missile defenses at its Doha airbase or to overcome the air defenses on an American warship in the Persian Gulf.”

He added this:

“[Iran’s] September attack on Aramco facilities in Saudi Arabia exposed the weakness of US air defenses. The Patriot anti-missile system can’t shoot anything flying lower than 60 meters, and Iran has low-flying cruise missiles. A successful strike against Doha certainly figures in American calculations.”

But he also noted the potential options available to Trump:

“If Iran were to attack Doha, America’s response likely would be devastating. Two dozen missiles or bombing sorties could wipe out Iran’s economy in a matter of hours. Fewer than a dozen power plants generate 60% of Iran’s electricity, and eight refineries produce 80% of its distillates. A single missile strike could disable each of these facilities, and bunker-buster bombs of the kind that Israel used last month in Lebanon would entirely destroy them. Without much effort, the US could destroy the Port of Kharg from which Iran exports 90% of its hydrocarbons.”

Iran is a bully.  Like every bully, it was testing America’s limits — pushing to see how far it could go.  They ate Obama’s lunch for eight years — they expected to do the same with Trump.  There is a valuable lesson from the investment realm Iran would do well to heed:  “Past performance is no guarantee of future results.”

And — Trump is no Barack Obama.

Please follow the author on Twitter @williamlgensert

via American Thinker

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New York’s jailbreak law already out of control

Weak-on-crime policies are rapidly showing their worst effects, as New York’s law abolishing bail enters its first full week. The results are so bad that even Democrats are now clamoring to save face and make changes to the law. Trump and Republicans would be wise to watch and learn from New York that they should not only jump off the criminal justice so-called “reform” bandwagon, but actually push policies getting tougher on criminals while relentlessly campaigning against those who side with violent criminals, gangsters, and drug traffickers.

Last week, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the NYPD is on high alert in light of tensions with Iran following the killing of Qassem Soleimani. However, the streets of the city are likely in greater danger from domestic criminals as a result of the jailbreak policies his party supported, and on that account, the police are actually on low alert out of fear of losing their jobs.

The NYPD announced that homicides jumped eight percent in 2019, and that is before the enactment of most of the pro-criminal laws. This comes on the heels of other data showing violent crime on the rise in parts of the city and on subways. That is very significant, given that murder rates fell every year since the Giuliani era in the early 1990s until the past few years. The great miracle of New York’s reduction in crime is being eaten away before our eyes, yet the politicians are focusing on making it tougher for police and prosecutors.

What can New York expect this year? Well, given that most crimes are committed by repeat offenders, and the repeat offenders will now roam the streets, it doesn’t take a Ph.D. to foresee the results. While many of those released without bail under the new law have just committed terrible crimes, what is often overlooked is that many are repeat offenders who have committed much worse crimes in the past.

For example, last Thursday, Tyquan Rivera of Rochester was released from jail after he was arrested on drug charges. The political system now treats drug trafficking as a minor crime, but the reality is that many people picked up for drugs had prior convictions for violent crimes. Locking them up on “lower”-level crimes is how we’ve kept the violent crime rate down for over two decades. Rivera is no different. In 2009, he was convicted of shooting Rochester police officer Anthony DiPonzio in the back of the head. Thanks to weak sentencing, he was out on the streets in 2016 to commit more crimes. Now that he has been picked up on drug charges, the new anti-bail law doesn’t take into account his serious criminal record. He will remain free indefinitely.

“Courts have been stripped of much of their discretion in determining whether a defendant should be held pending disposition of his/her case,” said Monroe County District Attorney Sandra Doorley in a statement to CR. “Rather, the court now looks to a structure of Qualifying vs. Non-Qualifying offenses where dangerousness or threat to public safety cannot be considered. If a defendant is accused of a ‘non-qualifying’ offense, the court must release the defendant on his/her own recognizance or set non-monetary conditions of release.” Thus, in the case of Rivera, even though he was previously convicted for attempted murder of a cop and was arrested this time for allegedly selling fentanyl to undercover officers on two separate occasions, he walked out of the courtroom back to the streets.

How many more people as violent as Rivera will be let back onto the streets? It could be thousands. Think about all those people who rang in the new year with drunk driving and killed pedestrians or motorists. They are all out of jail. Farkell Hopkins was arrested for killing a pedestrian on New Year’s Eve while driving at twice the legal drinking limit. He was immediately released.

The jailbreak law applies retroactively to some of the worst criminals already in jail awaiting trial, too. In July, Paul Barbaritano was arrested in Albany for allegedly strangling a 29-year-old woman with a karate belt and then slitting her throat. However, because he is only charged with second-degree murder, he was released on January 2, despite his rap sheet, which includes a conviction for robbery.

Likewise, in North Westchester, a 27-year-old man who was caught last week breaking into a girl’s bedroom and was later found to have committed theft earlier that night was released. Under the current law, those crimes are considered low-level felonies.

Democrats are already facing such backlash from the bail “reform” bill that they are talking about modifying it. But rather than granting them cover to very partially fix one aspect of a more systemic problem, American citizens need to keep up the pressure and focus on the broader picture. Liberals in both parties are promoting radical leniencies across every part of the criminal justice system, not just in the context of pretrial jail time, but even in post-conviction prison time.



Last Friday, Governor Andrew Cuomo freed Monica Szlekovics, a woman who was convicted of a brutal murder in 1996. He pardoned her 23 years before she was even eligible for parole, citing her “extreme, ongoing physical and psychological abuse from her husband” as an excuse for her violent past, which include helping her husband with several kidnappings and murder. But the problem with liberals in states like California and New York is that they want to have it both ways with the plea of mental illness. They want to say criminals can’t be held culpable for their heinous crimes because they are incorrigibly ill, but at the same time they want to abolish confinement in psychiatric hospitals. They want them released on the streets to commit more crimes that they supposedly just can’t help committing.

This is the nightmare we will all live through in every major city unless we find a party willing to champion the victims and law-abiding citizens the way Reagan did. Several years’ worth of weak-on-crime policies are beginning to take their toll in many parts of the country.

At present, 100 percent of the focus on criminal justice issues, even in GOP-run states, is all about the criminal and how we can further reduce the prison population. We must remember Reagan’s admonishment that “for too long, the victims of crime have been the forgotten persons of our criminal justice system.” “Rarely do we give victims the help they need or the attention they deserve,” said Reagan in an April 8, 1981, proclamation creating National Crime Victims Week. “Yet the protection of our citizens — to guard them from becoming victims — is the primary purpose of our penal laws. Thus, each new victim personally represents an instance in which our system has failed to prevent crime. Lack of concern for victims compounds that failure.”

The time has come for Trump to jettison the Koch influence in his White House and return to his long-held view on criminal justice, which tracked closely with Reagan’s. As he wrote in his book, “The America We Deserve,” “The next time you hear someone saying there are too many people in prison, ask them how many thugs they’re willing to relocate to their neighborhood. The answer: None.”



The post New York’s jailbreak law already out of control appeared first on Conservative Review.

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Judicial and Sanctuary Abuse

Judicial and Sanctuary AbuseThe Western World, which unprecedented prosperity is the natural result of individual freedom and limited government, is suffering remarkable political turmoil. On their long-running experiment authoritarians in all parties have become too strident, prompting popular uprisings. And to extend arbitrary control, an independent judiciary has been corrupted. Individuals such as General Flynn are threatened in a manner seen in Medieval Times.  And what San Francisco, for example, has been doing to the medieval concept of sanctuary has been astonishing. Political turmoil, even hysteria, began when ordinary folk finally woke up saying “No!” to unrelenting bureaucratic intrusion.  Regrettably, our governing classes have become, well, ungovernable. 

via CanadaFreePress.Com

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WATCH: Obama’s DHS Secretary Debunks Dems’ Claim Trump Didn’t Have Authority To Kill Soleimani; Now He’s Under Fire From Left

The secretary of the Department of Homeland Security under Barack Obama appeared on “Meet the Press” Sunday to discuss President Trump’s decision to take out Iran’s top military leader, Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force, a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, who the Pentagon says was “actively developing plans” for more attacks on Americans.

During the interview, former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson torpedoed the Democrats’ talking point about Trump supposedly needing congressional approval to order the strike on Soleimani. Whether or not you agree with the Trump administration’s description of Soleimani as a terrorist,” Johnson explained, the president had “ample domestic legal authority to take him out without additional congressional authorization.”

“If you believe everything our government is saying about General Soleimani, he was a lawful military objective and the president, under his constitutional authority as commander-in-chief, had ample domestic legal authority to take him out without additional congressional authorization,” Johnson told “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd Sunday, as reported by Town Hall (video below). “Whether he was a terrorist or a general in a military force that was engaged in armed attacks against our people, he was a lawful military objective.”

The U.S. Department of Defense explained in a statement issued shortly after the airstrike that killed Soleimani that the general was “actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.”

“General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region,” the Defense Department revealed in the statement. “General Soleimani and his Quds Force were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition service members and the wounding of thousands more. He had orchestrated attacks on coalition bases in Iraq over the last several months – including the attack on December 27th – culminating in the death and wounding of additional American and Iraqi personnel. General Soleimani also approved the attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad that took place this week.”

After he defended Trump’s authority to order the strike against the general, Johnson was promptly targeted by the left, including Media Matters, which accused both Johnson and Todd of failing to disclose that the former DHS secretary is now a board member of defense contractor Lockheed Martin – suggesting Johnson is actively attempting to promote war for his self-interest.

“Jeh Johnson, who was secretary of homeland security under President Barack Obama, appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press to discuss President Donald Trump ordering the assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani,” the Media Matters report reads. “Neither Johnson nor host Chuck Todd disclosed that Johnson is a board member of defense contractor Lockheed Martin, which reportedly paid him over $300,000 in 2018 alone.”

The left-wing organization also highlighted a tweet from Popular Information’s Judd Legum calling foul on the omission:

In its report on Johnson’s defense of Trump’s authority to order the strike, Town Hall cites a document on the “Law of Armed Conflict” released by the Peterson Air Force Base’s Legal Office, which defines “military objectives” as “any object which by its nature, location, purpose, or use makes an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture, or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage.”

In April 2019, the U.S. Department of State announced that Soleimani was responsible for 17 percent of American deaths during the Iraqi War (2003-2011) as the man in control of all Iranian and Iran-backed operations in the region.

Related: Iraq Votes To Kick U.S. Out, Trump Drops The Hammer In Response

via The Daily Wire

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ABC’s Raddatz Moved by ‘Powerful’ ‘Profound’ Soleimani ‘Mourners’ Chanting ‘Death to America’

ABC News spent another morning sympathizing with our enemies on Monday’s Good Morning America. This time, it was correspondent Martha Raddatz’s turn to be awestruck by the anti-American protests in Iran over the U.S. drone strike-kill of General Qasem Soleimani, last week. Instead of praising the death of a man who ordered the murder and torture of countless American soldiers, Raddatz sided with the Iranians, touting the “mourning” over their “revered” military leader while worrying that Iran would now seek “revenge” on the United…

via NewsBusters – Exposing Liberal Media Bias

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Netflix Partners With Vox to Create Docuseries on Sex, Promotes Polyamory

Have you ever browsed through Netflix, looking for a show that went into detail about the strange sexual fantasies and tendencies of other people? Me neither. But Netflix sure has come a long way from being solely a streaming service to now creating and promoting shows that showcase sexual fetishes, like sleeping with multiple partners, being attracted to partners of either sex, and bondage.

via NewsBusters – Exposing Liberal Media Bias

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We Hear You: In Defense of Charter Schools and Parents’ Rights

Editor’s note: One of The Daily Signal’s new year’s resolutions is to inspire you to write us about our coverage and what’s on your minds. So drop a line to letters@dailysignal.com.Ken McIntyre

Dear Daily Signal: Daniel Davis’s podcast interview with charter schools advocate Charles Mitchell (“In Pennsylvania, a War on Charter Schools”) also reflects, although to a lesser extent perhaps, a war for many Arizonans too. This is especially so for those in the big cities such as Phoenix, but even in some smaller towns in the state.

Parents in Arizona are not happy with:

—What their kids aren’t learning in public schools. Computers seem to do a lot of the teaching in some schools these days.

—What their
kids are learning, like “America was never as great as it claims
to have been” and ditto its Founding Fathers.

—Sensing that their
kids are not safe in some schools, where bullying and threats from other
students are major problems, especially if the kids are from homes
of churchgoing families and/or the school is in a rough neighborhood. And now
we have school shootings added to the mix.

As a result, many parents are putting their kids in church schools or charter schools, and even doing homeschooling (doing a good job of it, too, in many instances).

Public schools want the charter schools closed because they
get funds from the state (based on the number of students served) that the
public schools think they should be getting. 

When I was a kid in the Great Depression, I went through four different kinds of schools: a Catholic school (I’m not Catholic, but it was just a block from our apartment) and a public school in a small New Mexico town; a two-teacher country school and a high school in a Mormon community in Arizona.

I learned a lot from each one of them and not a one of those really, really underpaid teachers in underfunded schools ever told me America was never as great as it claims to have been. 

They taught us this country was a great place to be, and it would be up to us to keep it that way when we grew up. We haven’t exactly lived up to their expectations, have we?—Peggy Williams, Arizona

Trade With Canada and Mexico

Dear Daily Signal: I wonder why you and others did not report to your readers, viewers, and subscribers the cause(s) of the House’s long failure to vote on the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement in 2019 (“House Votes Overwhelmingly to Pass US-Mexico-Canada Trade Deal”)?

Where was the bill stuck in the House? What were the objections to
the trade agreement? Who was making an effort to compromise and to move the
bill along?

Was AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka the problem? Was Speaker Nancy
Pelosi really blocking it?

Why not support those in Congress who wanted to vote to pass the USMCA,
by providing your audience with information that we ought to have to help build
a popular call for Congress to ‘”get on with our business”? 

In many recent days, you covered too much about the Democrats and impeachment, and not enough about what matters to people trying to make a living—which is all of us, including yourselves. Thanks for your attention to my note.—George Gramelspacher, Indiana

Impeachment as the Swamp’s Revenge

Dear Daily Signal: There is an old saying: Play with fire, and you will get burned. 

This
is what’s happening to the president. He has dared
to attack, in these past three years, the Washington/Capitol
Hill political aristocracy and its swamp. 

Politicians
from both sides of the aisle, lobbyists, special interest
groups, bureaucrats who control the constitutional process, biased mainstream media,
various FBI and CIA types all have a hand in this corruption game. They
will never surrender what they think is rightfully theirs. 

As
it now stands, things have gone beyond the point of no return. Notwithstanding
whatever this president does to fight the swamp, the swamp indeed
continues to control Washington. And it will continue to wield and
brandish its power in an unabashed fashion for the painfully
long-term foreseeable future. 

The
president, who mostly stands alone in this fight, has lost the battle. The
Pelosis and Schiffs of this world have won the Trump-Swamp War. But
pathetically, the average American hasn’t had a clue of what’s happening. 

The sad thing about this whole affair is that Donald Trump, as an outsider to the Georgetown political cocktail party class, earnestly and in good faith attempted to clean up this cesspool. 

But the task has been just too herculean even for him, as president, to forge such a victory. So, get ready. America’s ship of state is on the verge of sailing into the perilous waters of socialism.—Earl Beal, Terre Haute, Ind.

***

I didn’t believe that you can get so many liberal airheads into one room, but it sure came to light when five of these airheads were asked in a House hearing just what was so damaging about President Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s leader.

They looked at each other, bewildered. This witch hunt should have been stopped right there, so the president could get on with running the country.—Roy Kappel, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

***

Thanks for Fred Lucas’s great feature, “When the House First Tried to Impeach a President, It Failed.”

Sounds like Congress didn’t get along very well even in the 1800s. LOL—Allen Muench

This and That

Dear Daily Signal: I wanted to thank you for your daily Morning Bell updates and for making them accessible to a screen reader, as I am a totally blind individual.

I also want to thank Daniel
Davis for his list of 29 books (“29
Books That Would Make an Excellent Christmas Gift
”). I was able to find many of them
on a site where a group puts books into formats so that blind and visually
impaired readers are able to read them with either braille or audio.

I look forward to reading many more updates from you.— Betsy Grenevitch, Loganville, Ga.

***

Here in California,
we probably had a million fraudulent votes in Los Angeles County (“More
Proof That Voter Fraud Is Real, and Bipartisan
”).

In Orange County, a few races actually won by Republicans were lost when so-called advisers brought in harvested votes after the polls closed.

Judicial Watch got some measure of confession by Los Angeles
County, but it seems that no cleanup has been done.—Mars Ramage

***

Please stop bashing Chick-fil-A on your podcasts, as occurs in Rachel del Guidice’s interview of author and commentator David Limbaugh (“David Limbaugh on New Far Left: Americans Must Resist ‘Tyrannical Bullying’”).

Their decision to reevaluate their giving policies is their decision.  If it is bad, it will hurt their business. But you are supposing that you can read the minds and hearts of
the corporate decision-makers. You cannot.

The far-left headlines trumpeted the far-left narrative and you jumped
on board with them. You must know that this is very wrong. 

If you join other media outlets in hanging your success on created, attention-grabbing headlines, I’m done with The Daily Signal. I’m praying for a turnaround.—Bob Fuller, Bella Vista, Ariz.

***

Regarding the
commentary by Robert Moffit: The flaw with President Trump’s policy on hospital
pricing is that it can do nothing to help people who are locked into a hospital
by their HMOs (“How
Trump’s Sunshine Rules Will Boost Transparency in Health Care Prices
”).

The
HMOs always make you use a hospital a lot farther than where you live. But HMO
users have no choice.

In an emergency, you can be transported to the nearest hospital. But if you need a “procedure,” they transfer you to a hospital 20 miles away or even more. This makes for a family hardship in many ways. Like the veterans, we need hospital choice.—Carol Ulery

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How Are We Doing?

Dear
Daily Signal:
I often check in with The Daily Signal to “see what condition my
condition is in,” a la Kenny Rogers and the First Edition. The 1960s were wild
and crazy, often confusing times, but people did “out” an insane and useless
Vietnam War.

Turn on the electronic newspapers today and more people are aware
of other people’s bizarre behavior, actions, and motivations through and by
only a handful of nonalphabet news sources. Thank God for Ben, Michelle,
Dennis, Larry—just a few of
the voices of conservative thought. Also thank God for Donald Trump.

This from an ex-hippie author and philosopher of the ’60s, now a naturopathic NMD and Six Sigma Black Belt.  Stay classy, real peace people!—Don Hall

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I recently got mail confirming my membership with The Heritage Foundation. I like The Daily Signal’s Morning Bell e-mails. So far, so good! Keep up the good work.—Davis Roenisch  

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We need conservatives to stay focused and defeat liberal policies.—Tom Sprenger

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I am forever grateful for The Daily Signal and The Heritage Foundation. Cheers!—Oscar Manful 

The post We Hear You: In Defense of Charter Schools and Parents’ Rights appeared first on The Daily Signal.

via The Daily Signal

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Thanks to Trump, the Forty-Year Appeasement of Iran Is Over

The assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani is an unusual, possibly aberrant, event.  The killing of this individual leader of a sovereign state may lead to all-out war between Iran and the U.S. — or, on the other hand, the assassination may bring an end to the cycle of Iranian violence countered by U.S. and world diplomatic flatulence and appeasement.

Assassinating the leaders of terrorist organizations — i.e., non-state actors, such as Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi — did not lead to a greater war footing against the USA because, as terrorist organization leaders, not heads of state, they are automatically considered rogue, even by sovereign state leaders sympathetic to their goals.  Al-Qaeda and ISIS, despite any claims to territorial governance, are non-state actors.  Thus, despite ISIS’s former control of land areas, ISIS was despised for its aggressions but was not considered a serious threat to the power of leaders of other Muslim-dominant states within the region.  The Middle Eastern Muslim states that may, to a certain degree, be sympathetic to ISIS’s dreams of a re-established caliphate such as existed for hundreds of years nevertheless did not intend to defer to the leader of ISIS as that caliph.  Despite Islam’s socio-political backwardness in today’s world, the glories of Islam’s earlier history loom large in the consciousness of most Islamics.  ISIS did not appear to Islamics as the proper heir of that presumed glorious history.

Iran’s listing as a state sponsor of terrorism by the U.S. State Department puts it into a special category.  Iran is a behind-the-scenes puppeteer of Hamas operating in Gaza, Hezb’allah operating in Lebanon, and the Houthis operating in Yemen as well as a variety of groups in Iraq.  Not only did Iran held 52 Americans hostage for over a year after the ayatollahs overthrew the Shah in the  1970s, but the Iranians were crucial in the bombing of the U.S. military barracks in Lebanon (1983), the bombing of the Khobar Towers and American troops in Saudi Arabia (1996), the bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (1998), the bombing of the USS Cole (2000), and the attack on the World Trade Center (2001).  With this nefarious history, acting through proxies to undermine the security of the West and the U.S. in particular, Iran’s designation as a terrorist state — living in the gray area between sovereign legitimacy and terrorist aggression — is warranted and necessary.

In essence, the Iranians have been in an undeclared war with the U.S. since the ayatollahs and their religiously inspired and power-mad henchmen took over the reins of government from the despotic but pro-American Shah in the seventies.  However, fear of being perceived as declaring war on Islam has kept us from a direct declaration of war on Iran even though the Islamic world is divided between the Shiites, represented by Iran, and the larger majority of Muslims, who are Sunnis.  George H.W. Bush was considered a master diplomat because he managed to garner large-scale support and allies in the Islamic world for his attack on Iraq and Saddam Hussein after Saddam successfully invaded Kuwait.  Bush was able to accomplish this feat because he was acting — on the surface — in defense of an Islamic country, Kuwait, from the depredations of a vicious dictator, Saddam Hussein.  However, Bush refrained from capturing or executing Saddam or deposing Saddam and taking control of Iraq.  He carefully refrained from asserting hegemony over an Islamic country. 

Why were Soleimani and other evil players not targeted over these many decades of Iranian murders and plots to murder?  As noted above, there was a fear of being perceived as anti-Islamic or as advancing a “clash of civilizations” agenda, even being so perceived by Islamics who were anti-Shiite.  Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat from Michigan who worked as a CIA analyst and Pentagon official on Middle East issues under both Bush and Obama, stated that “what always kept both Democratic and Republican presidents from targeting Soleimani himself was the simple question: Was the strike worth the likely retaliation, and the potential to pull us into protracted conflict?”

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who was the head of the Joint Special Operations Command in the Bush administration, in a 2009 article for Foreign Policy recounted his decision not to attack Soleimani’s convoy in Iraq one night in 2007.  He wrote that while “there was good reason” to attack Soleimani over the deaths of U.S. forces by Iranian-placed roadside bombs in Iraq, “to avoid a firefight, and the contentious politics that would follow, I decided that we should monitor the caravan, not strike immediately.”

We can see, then, that appeasement of the Iranian fanatics did not begin with the sell-out Iran deal completed by President Barack Obama and his secretary of state, John Kerry.  Rather Obama’s deal with Iran was full blown appeasement and bribery of Iran the likes of which have taken place since the administration of Pres. Jimmy Carter.  (It is worth noting here that billions of dollars of frozen bank accounts were released to Iran as an important part of the deal for the hostage release on January 20, 1981.)  Despite violent aggression against the U.S. by Iran, we have continued to look the other way in order to avoid a wider conflict with Iran that might threaten our ally Israel as well as American interests or lead to conflict with other non-Shiite players in the Muslim world who might be offended or incensed by our retaliation.

By assassinating Soleimani, President Trump has broken with the conventional wisdom regarding the need to appease Iran in its covert war against the U.S.  However, 9/11 was a game-changer that has not been properly acknowledged by the USA.  The present administration has been taking a more proactive and pro-America policy line in foreign affairs.  Diplomatic flatulence has been replaced by a policy of emphatic diligence in behalf of our safety and prosperity.  Emphatic diligence means more pushback against foreign policies that send mixed messages about our commitment to stand against political or economic tyrannies.  Pushback is affirmed by the Trump administration, but not desire for conquest.

Bad deals and bad players in our world often are disguised as being multilateral and thus serving a wider good.  But those depictions such as TPP, NAFTA, the Iran deal, the Paris Climate Accords, WTO trade deals with the People’s Republic of China, and even to some degree NATO can be self-serving to placate the crowd that loves being served hors d’oeuvres by fawning servants in Geneva, Brussels, and other prestigious capitals.

Trump’s assassination of Soleimani is taking us out of this diplomatic quagmire.  He is signaling that the years of appeasement of Iran are over.  Hiding behind terrorist proxy groups has worked for Iran since the ayatollahs took over in the 1970s.  This strike against the head of the Revolutionary Guards may cause the cowardly leaders of Iran to reconsider their modus operandi on the world stage, or it may lead to a lashing out.  Whichever path they take, our resolve to stop participating in the cycle of terror attacks and subsequent appeasement of a rogue state is now affirmed.

The assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani is an unusual, possibly aberrant, event.  The killing of this individual leader of a sovereign state may lead to all-out war between Iran and the U.S. — or, on the other hand, the assassination may bring an end to the cycle of Iranian violence countered by U.S. and world diplomatic flatulence and appeasement.

Assassinating the leaders of terrorist organizations — i.e., non-state actors, such as Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi — did not lead to a greater war footing against the USA because, as terrorist organization leaders, not heads of state, they are automatically considered rogue, even by sovereign state leaders sympathetic to their goals.  Al-Qaeda and ISIS, despite any claims to territorial governance, are non-state actors.  Thus, despite ISIS’s former control of land areas, ISIS was despised for its aggressions but was not considered a serious threat to the power of leaders of other Muslim-dominant states within the region.  The Middle Eastern Muslim states that may, to a certain degree, be sympathetic to ISIS’s dreams of a re-established caliphate such as existed for hundreds of years nevertheless did not intend to defer to the leader of ISIS as that caliph.  Despite Islam’s socio-political backwardness in today’s world, the glories of Islam’s earlier history loom large in the consciousness of most Islamics.  ISIS did not appear to Islamics as the proper heir of that presumed glorious history.

Iran’s listing as a state sponsor of terrorism by the U.S. State Department puts it into a special category.  Iran is a behind-the-scenes puppeteer of Hamas operating in Gaza, Hezb’allah operating in Lebanon, and the Houthis operating in Yemen as well as a variety of groups in Iraq.  Not only did Iran held 52 Americans hostage for over a year after the ayatollahs overthrew the Shah in the  1970s, but the Iranians were crucial in the bombing of the U.S. military barracks in Lebanon (1983), the bombing of the Khobar Towers and American troops in Saudi Arabia (1996), the bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (1998), the bombing of the USS Cole (2000), and the attack on the World Trade Center (2001).  With this nefarious history, acting through proxies to undermine the security of the West and the U.S. in particular, Iran’s designation as a terrorist state — living in the gray area between sovereign legitimacy and terrorist aggression — is warranted and necessary.

In essence, the Iranians have been in an undeclared war with the U.S. since the ayatollahs and their religiously inspired and power-mad henchmen took over the reins of government from the despotic but pro-American Shah in the seventies.  However, fear of being perceived as declaring war on Islam has kept us from a direct declaration of war on Iran even though the Islamic world is divided between the Shiites, represented by Iran, and the larger majority of Muslims, who are Sunnis.  George H.W. Bush was considered a master diplomat because he managed to garner large-scale support and allies in the Islamic world for his attack on Iraq and Saddam Hussein after Saddam successfully invaded Kuwait.  Bush was able to accomplish this feat because he was acting — on the surface — in defense of an Islamic country, Kuwait, from the depredations of a vicious dictator, Saddam Hussein.  However, Bush refrained from capturing or executing Saddam or deposing Saddam and taking control of Iraq.  He carefully refrained from asserting hegemony over an Islamic country. 

Why were Soleimani and other evil players not targeted over these many decades of Iranian murders and plots to murder?  As noted above, there was a fear of being perceived as anti-Islamic or as advancing a “clash of civilizations” agenda, even being so perceived by Islamics who were anti-Shiite.  Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat from Michigan who worked as a CIA analyst and Pentagon official on Middle East issues under both Bush and Obama, stated that “what always kept both Democratic and Republican presidents from targeting Soleimani himself was the simple question: Was the strike worth the likely retaliation, and the potential to pull us into protracted conflict?”

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who was the head of the Joint Special Operations Command in the Bush administration, in a 2009 article for Foreign Policy recounted his decision not to attack Soleimani’s convoy in Iraq one night in 2007.  He wrote that while “there was good reason” to attack Soleimani over the deaths of U.S. forces by Iranian-placed roadside bombs in Iraq, “to avoid a firefight, and the contentious politics that would follow, I decided that we should monitor the caravan, not strike immediately.”

We can see, then, that appeasement of the Iranian fanatics did not begin with the sell-out Iran deal completed by President Barack Obama and his secretary of state, John Kerry.  Rather Obama’s deal with Iran was full blown appeasement and bribery of Iran the likes of which have taken place since the administration of Pres. Jimmy Carter.  (It is worth noting here that billions of dollars of frozen bank accounts were released to Iran as an important part of the deal for the hostage release on January 20, 1981.)  Despite violent aggression against the U.S. by Iran, we have continued to look the other way in order to avoid a wider conflict with Iran that might threaten our ally Israel as well as American interests or lead to conflict with other non-Shiite players in the Muslim world who might be offended or incensed by our retaliation.

By assassinating Soleimani, President Trump has broken with the conventional wisdom regarding the need to appease Iran in its covert war against the U.S.  However, 9/11 was a game-changer that has not been properly acknowledged by the USA.  The present administration has been taking a more proactive and pro-America policy line in foreign affairs.  Diplomatic flatulence has been replaced by a policy of emphatic diligence in behalf of our safety and prosperity.  Emphatic diligence means more pushback against foreign policies that send mixed messages about our commitment to stand against political or economic tyrannies.  Pushback is affirmed by the Trump administration, but not desire for conquest.

Bad deals and bad players in our world often are disguised as being multilateral and thus serving a wider good.  But those depictions such as TPP, NAFTA, the Iran deal, the Paris Climate Accords, WTO trade deals with the People’s Republic of China, and even to some degree NATO can be self-serving to placate the crowd that loves being served hors d’oeuvres by fawning servants in Geneva, Brussels, and other prestigious capitals.

Trump’s assassination of Soleimani is taking us out of this diplomatic quagmire.  He is signaling that the years of appeasement of Iran are over.  Hiding behind terrorist proxy groups has worked for Iran since the ayatollahs took over in the 1970s.  This strike against the head of the Revolutionary Guards may cause the cowardly leaders of Iran to reconsider their modus operandi on the world stage, or it may lead to a lashing out.  Whichever path they take, our resolve to stop participating in the cycle of terror attacks and subsequent appeasement of a rogue state is now affirmed.

via American Thinker

Enjoy this article? Read the full version at the authors website: https://www.americanthinker.com/

Nancy Pelosi to Introduce Resolution Implying Pre-emptive Surrender to Iran

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) wrote a letter to her Democrat colleagues in the House on Sunday to reveal a new “War Powers Resolution” that amounts to a pre-emptive surrender to Iran in ongoing hostilities.

Pelosi’s letter begins with the declaration that President Donald Trump’s airstrike last week targeting Iranian General Qasem Suleimani, leader of the terrorist Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IGRC) Quds Force, responsible for the murders of hundreds of Americans and for recent attacks on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, was “provocative and disproportionate,” terms suggesting the attack was illegal under international law and could constitute a war crime.

Harvard Law School professor emeritus (and Democrat) Alan Dershowitz argued in Monday’s Wall Street Journal that the strike was not only lawful, but an “easy call”: “The president has the constitutional authority to take military actions, short of declaring war, that he and his advisers deem necessary to protect American citizens. This authority is extremely broad, especially when the actions must, by their nature, be kept secret from the intended target.”

Nonetheless, Pelosi’s letter indicates that the House will declare the president’s action illegal under international law.

The letter further claims that Trump’s action “endangered our servicemembers, diplomats and others by risking a serious escalation of tensions with Iran” — placing the responsibility for violence not on Iran, which recently attacked a U.S. Navy drone; a Saudi oil field; and, via proxies, Americans soldiers and civilians in Iraq; but on the United States, which had restrained itself until the recent assault by an Iranian-backed militia on the embassy.

The letter goes on to describe a new resolution that would “limit the President’s military actions regarding Iran,” essentially signaling a surrender in the potential conflict before the Iranian regime itself had managed to respond.

Pelosi adds that the resolution “reasserts Congress’s long-established oversight responsibilities by mandating that if no further Congressional action is taken, the Administration’s military hostilities with regard to Iran cease within 30 days.” Under current law, the War Powers Act of 1973 limits the time that a president can lead a military effort, without formal authorization, to 60 days following a required presidential report to Congress when hostilities begin.

The new resolution, which Pelosi says mirrors a similar Senate bill by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), would amount to an effective surrender by signaling that the president had no congressional support for striking back against Iran, and imposing a new deadline for any military action that would give Iran greater freedom of action. Paradoxically, the resolution could force the president to choose more drastic measures of conducting a war effort before the deadline.

By declaring the attack “provocative and disproportionate,” the resolution also invites international prosecution of the president, as well as members of the administration and the military itself, who carry out his orders. The U.S. does not recognize the authority of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to prosecute Americans for war crimes, but the ICC takes a different view, and a future Democratic administration might well side with the ICC instead.

Pelosi’s letter indicates that the new “War Powers Resolution” will be introduced and voted on this week. She has not yet indicated when she will transfer the articles of impeachment passed by the House on Dec. 18 to the Senate, which she claims is a necessary prerequisite to the Senate holding a trial on the president’s removal from office.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

via Breitbart News

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