Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review cheer Republicans for passing the Keystone XL pipeline bill and forcing Pres. Obama to buckle or defy the will of most Americans. They also groan as the U.S. is forced to evacuate diplomats and Marines out of Yemen. And they scoff at reports that Vladimir Putin has successfully negotiated a ceasefire in Ukraine.
‘There’s No Winners at All’
Middle East scholar Dr. Mike Evans says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now stuck in a partisan tug-of-war among American politicians that could cost him his job and he believes whoever convinced Netanyahu to agree to address the U.S. Congress ought to be lose their job.
With just weeks remaining before next month’s parliamentary elections in Israel, Netanyahu and much of Israeli politics are consumed by the partisan battle here in Washington over Netanyahu’s upcoming address to a joint session of Congress over the Iranian nuclear threat.
On January 21, House Speaker John Boehner announced Netanyahu would address Congress on March 3. The White House complained that it had not been notified and called the invitation a breach of protocol, particularly so close to the Israeli elections. Many Democrats, including Vice President Joe Biden and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi have said they will not attend the speech.
“It’s a horrendous mistake and whoever advised him to do it should be fired,” said Evans. “I’m sick over it. I’m sick that he’s put in that position. Obviously, he’s brilliant and articulate and he knows what’s going on with Iran, but the timing is horrible, absolutely horrible.”
Evans, who is a longtime personal friend of Netanyahu and the author of 67 published books, including “Jimmy Carter. the Liberal Left and World Chaos” and “Atomic Iran,” fears this massive distraction during a tight campaign could give momentum to the more moderate and liberal political elements in Israel, which would be welcome news in the Obama White House.
“It’s a no-win for [Netanyahu]. The opposition party is screaming their heads off, ‘Cancel it! Cancel it!’ So if he cancels it, he looks weak. On the other hand, he has a real genuine message that needs to be heard by the House and by the nation. But the timing is extremely serious and could end up existential for him. It could in fact cost him the election,” said Evans.
According to Evans, the controversy over the speech is such a big deal because the Israelis don’t have many allies and they don’t want to alienate their biggest one.
“A lot of Israelis believe, ‘The world’s against us. The world is against us as they were at Auschwitz.’ And they believe there’s no solution. So they want friends. They desperately want friends and alliances and they don’t want to be alone,” he said.
“So this dilemma with the House is upsetting them terribly because they don’t want to come across and be perceived as being pushy, being arrogant and pressuring an ally like the United States. The average Israeli on the street is really troubled about this,” said Evans.
Furthermore, Evans says Israelis are keenly aware that the vast majority of Jewish Americans are Democrats and that adds to the unease over this debate.
“The Democratic Party has traditionally been extremely strong supporters of Israel. This has not just been defined as a challenge to Obama but as embarrassing the Democratic Party. So it’s very problematic,” said Evans.
If the speech goes forward, Evans worries that the critical message about Iran will be lost and it will end up as a politically bruising experience for everyone, particularly Netanyahu.
“He’s being sucked in to a partisan battle that he didn’t start. It’s a lose, lose, lose. Nobody wins in this one. There’s no winners at all,” he said.
Despite the threat of his friend looking weak at a critical point in the campaign, Evans says the smart thing to do would be to postpone the speech.
“If I was advising him, I would tell him, for security reasons, don’t do it. Postpone the speech. Give the speech, but postpone the speech for a couple of weeks and get out of the drama,” said Evans.
Evans says the race for control of parliament is razor thin right now and he is very cautiously optimistic about the chances of Netanyahu and Likud hanging on to control with a coalition government.
“The vote is very close right now. As a matter of fact, Herzog and Livni have a slight edge. So the elections are very problematic for Bibi. I don’t believe he’s going to lose them because they are a coalition government and he can probably put the government together. but it’s very close,” said Evans.
Election day in Israel is March 17.
Three Martini Lunch 2/11/15
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review applaud NBC News for taking a serious approach to the Brian Williams controversy. They also slam the Obama administration for refusing to admit the president was wrong about the terrorist attack at the kosher deli in Paris being “random”. And they discuss the mixed legacy of departing “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart.
‘It’s the Way You Lose A Country’
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) says Republicans are stuck in a box of their leaders’ own making in the effort to defund President Obama’s unilateral immigration actions and he says Obama’s ongoing aggression on amnesty coupled with a weak GOP response are putting the United States in a very dangerous position.
In December, Republican leaders decided to delay any legislative fight over amnesty until they controlled both chambers of Congress in January. At that time, lawmakers approved most government funding through September but extended Department of Homeland Security (DHS) appropriations only through this month.
In January, the House approved a bill to fund DHS through September while stripping out funds for the implementation of Obama’s unilateral action to grant legal status to some five million people in the country illegally but who have children with legal status. Despite a GOP majority in the Senate, Republicans have been unable to recruit any Democrats to their side on this issue. Without 60 votes, the measure will die and DHS funding would be in limbo.
With activists, media and lawmakers clamoring for a new strategy, Gohmert says Republicans are keeping their powder dry at the moment.
“If we are already talking about Plan B before we give up on Plan A then we’re never going to have any chance on Plan A. If you understand and appreciate the position, it’s tough to talk about a Plan B if you’re still actually honestly pushing Plan A,” he said.
In the meantime, Gohmert says Obama is already taking steps to expand what the congressman calls “unconstitutional amnesty” into a problem involving exponentially more illegal immigrants.
“Obama is now talking about allowing all those people to whom he’s given unconstitutional amnesty the ability to bring in extended family members. They’ll call it immediate family but the five million could turn into twenty million or twenty-five million once you start bringing in all the other family members. This is part of his fundamentally transforming America,” said Gohmert.
Gohmert was staunchly opposed to the December strategy on immigration, known around Washington as a “cromnibus”. Now he says that flawed approach is haunting the GOP.
“We’re in a box because our leadership decided to fund everything the president cared about and only leave Homeland Security unfunded and expected to use that as leverage,” said Gohmert, who believes the only leverage was achieved by the White House as Republicans were left with no good options.
“You’re giving up all the leverage. You’re giving up everything that the president wants and then you’re going to leave us in the position of negotiating by saying, ‘Now, if you don’t stop this unconstitutional, unilateral, amnesty that you are doing illegally, then we’re not going to fund the border patrol. We’re not going to fund people to keep us safe,'” said Gohmert.
For Gohmert, the “cromnibus” strategy in December did not reflect the fierce condemnation of Obama’s actions just a couple of weeks earlier.
“All the right things were said after the November election gave us the majority in the Senate and more seats in the House. We were going to fight, the expression was ‘tooth and nail’. Haven’t seen any teeth or nails coming out on this particular issue,” he said.
The congressman also noted the frustration conservatives had with leadership last summer. In the wake of the surge of illegal border crossings, including many by children, the House leadership tried to pass a border bill before summer recess. Gohmert says Republicans balked at the bill because House Speaker John Boehner would not say who authored it and members knew it did not originate from the House Judiciary Committee as it should.
After the Boehner bill was pulled, Gohmert joined House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Virginia) and several other members to craft a stronger bill that passed the House but never received consideration in the Democratically-controlled Senate.
Are Republican leaders committed to stopping amnesty but guilty of employing a lousy strategy or are they not all that distressed by the president’s actions? Gohmert says the jury is still out.
“There’s plenty of reasons to be concerned about the dedication of our leadership, but if Americans keep making their voice heard, then people will listen and that includes Democrats. They will listen when their constituents respond,” said Gohmert, who says the coalition exists to stop Obama in his tracks.
“There are enough union members and Democrats in the country who are feeling the pinch of the illegality of this president’s amnesty that are going to push their Democratic senators and members of Congress to stand more firmly with them,” he said.
Obama’s efforts to add family members to his orders from November is not the only controversy involving Obama and immigration this week. The Center for Immigration Studies released a report a few days ago suggesting 5.5 million people were granted work permits by the administration from 2009-2014 in addition to the 3.5 million approved by Congress, which is supposed to have jurisdiction over the permits.
Gohmert says Obama’s actions are pushing the U.S. to a very dangerous place.
“There’s word that that five may have actually been seven (million). We’re trying to get to the bottom of that. It is outrageous and it is part and parcel of the lawlessness that we’ve been dealing with in this administration. Unfortunately, when you have 50 percent of the American people are saying, ‘Hey, we’re OK with not having checks and balances in our government.’ It’s the way you lose a country,” he warned.
The congressman says America is treading down a path that has brought disaster to those who have traveled it before.
“I believe there’s enough people in the House and Senate that don’t want to lose this country. We don’t want to lose this little experiment, as (Benjamin) Franklin said a republic if we can keep it. If we allow the president to continue this kind of lawlessness, there will not be a republic. We will be morphing more over into more of a totalitarian, dictatorial type country,” said Gohmert.
Ultimately, Gohmert believes any meaningful effort to stop Obama will have to be waged over government funding.
“Then we can start cutting off the things that the president cares about in must-pass legislation that he’s got to sign. There are bills that he cares very deeply about and you can put him on the horns of a dilemma,” said Gohmert, who says there is one thing Republicans need if that’s going to happen.
“We’ve just got to have our leadership feel strongly enough about this that they will use the leverage that we have, instead of giving it away time after time,” said Gohmert.
Three Martini Lunch 2/10/15
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review cheer Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner for calling for right to work zones and ordering that union members do not have to pay dues if they don’t like the union’s activities. They also rip President Obama for saying the terrorist attacks at a Jewish deli in Paris were “random.” And they react to MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry asking Attorney General Eric Holder to quack like a duck.
‘The Greatest Deception in History’
The climate change movement is being rocked by another major ethical scandal that journalists and some climate scientists say could serve to expose the movement as “one of the greatest scientific scandals of all time.”
The latest blow against the credibility of the of those demanding urgent, sweeping political change in response to human activity allegedly threatening the sustainability of earth appeared in Saturday’s edition of the London Daily Telegraph. Columnist Christopher Booker cites the work of Paul Homewood on his “Not A Lot of People Know That” climate blog.
Two weeks earlier, Booker noted that Homewood compared the original temperatures recorded at weather stations in Paraguay over a 60 year period with the numbers now being used in climate reports.
“In each instance, the actual trend of 60 years of data had been dramatically reversed, so that a cooling trend was changed to one that showed a marked warming,” wrote Booker.
In the new piece, Booker reports on Homewood’s research into the original and revised data at many other South American weather stations.
“In each case he found the same suspicious one-way ‘adjustments,'” reported Booker.
According to Booker, Homewood is now studying similar data from arctic stations from Canada to Siberia.
“Again, in nearly every case, the same one-way adjustments have been made, to show warming up to 1 degree C or more higher than was indicated by the data that was actually recorded,” he wrote.
Homewood’s research shows a consistent changing of temperature data and always in a way that makes it appear the earth is getting warmer. Moreover, these changes were not made by obscure organizations. They were done through the U.S. government’s Global Historical Climate Network. Additional responsibility lies with the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the National Climate Data Center.
Climate scientists who do not buy into the global analysis on climate change say this manipulation is a devastating indictment of the movement.
“It’s enormously significant because the whole thrust of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is supposedly the official source of climate change data, have been saying that currently it is warmer than it has ever been in the historic record or the instrumental record,” said Dr. Tim Ball, a former professor of climatology and author of “The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science.”
Ball says while Homewood’s discoveries does not amount to breaking news, the reporting by the Telegraph is monumental.
“There’s nothing new about this, other than that it’s finally got into the mainstream media, but only into the conservative mainstream media because the Telegraph is a conservative newspaper in Britain,” said Ball.
Dr. Ball elaborated on the temperature fudging that he says has been going on for some time.
“This adjustment of the historic record has been going on for a very long time. It started with the elimination of a period known as the Medieval Warm Period a thousand years ago, when it was warmer than today,” he said.
Nonetheless, he says Homewood has uncovered valuable evidence of a massive scientific and political con job.
“What is now being disclosed by Homewood, but has been disclosed by others long before this, is that they are adjusting the modern instrumental temperature record so that the older records appear colder than they actually were. What that does is that it changed the gradient or slope of the temperature increase, making it look like the warming is much greater than it actually is. So this is what’s going on,” said Ball.
Ball says the scientific history of events like the Medieval Warm Period are a major problem for activists looking to convince people that human industrial activity over the past few hundred years is responsible for record-high temperatures. So he says they’ve determined to rewrite history.
“They’ve got to keep saying, ‘Oh no, it’s warmer now than it’s ever been.” So anything that suggests it was warmer in the past must be eliminated. So they created the infamous ‘hockey stick,’ which essentially rewrote the historic record,” said Ball.
Homewood’s research and Booker’s reporting have the potential of making this the biggest scandal since the revealed emails from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia, in which climate scientists allegedly admitted to manipulating data to reach preferred conclusions. Ball says this new potential scandal could actually be bigger. He says most people couldn’t decipher the contents of the emails very easily but the temperature changes are a very different story.
“This kind of thing is much more clear. When you start changing numbers and you can show that it’s clearly deliberate and it’s clearly all in one direction…this is much more understandable to the public,” said Ball.
Ball expects even more evidence of unethical science to be revealed before long.
“It isn’t just that they lowered the historic temperature. They also reduced the number of stations that they were using to determine the global temperature. They argued that in vast areas, where you only have one or two stations, that one station was representative of the temperature in a 1,200 kilometer radius. I mean it’s absolutely outrageous what they’ve done,” said Ball.
But far from deflating the climate change movement, Ball says revelations like the ones from Homewood will only intensify efforts to enact sweeping policy changes in the U.S. and beyond.
“Look for a cover-up because there’s huge volumes of money involved. There’s political implications with this with Obama with climate change as the key thing. Now they’ve got the pope involved in it. So there’ll be a scramble to counteract this. I mean a real vigorous scramble,” said Ball.
So how will climate change activists fight back against these revelations? Ball expects the same tactics he’s witnessed through the decades in this debate.
“They tell lies. They come out and say severe weather has increased when it hasn’t. They say that the temperature is continuing to increase when it hasn’t. They just tell lies about it and that’s what’s going on. Of course, as everybody knows, it’s not the original crime that gets you in trouble. It’s the cover-up,” said Ball.
“Once the cover-up is exposed, you’re done,” he said.
At the end of his column in Saturday’s Telegraph, Booker says, “This really does begin to look like one of the greatest scientific scandals of all time.” Ball agrees.
“I do think this is the greatest deception in history as I say in my book. There have been scandals in history but they’ve been regional or they’ve only impacted certain areas. This whole climate thing has had a global impact on energy and government policies around the world. So it really is the biggest deception in history. There’s so much money and so many political careers riding on this that it’s going to be a battle royale,” said Ball.
Three Martini Lunch 2/9/15
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Andrew Johnson of National Review react to Brian Williams taking a leave of absence as anchor of NBC Nightly News. They groan as Bob Woodward reveals the Obama administration has no strategy in the fight against ISIS and that the White House is micromanaging the fight on a day to day basis. And they slam Democrats for suddenly claiming to be too busy to attend Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress.
Why Reagan Still Stands Tall
Ronald Reagan left the White House more than 26 years ago, but his legacy still dominates the American political landscape, and a former Reagan political director says the Gipper’s record and principled positions explain why.
Reagan was born on February 6, 1911. Friday would have been his 104th birthday. When Reagan died in 2004, tens of millions of Americans turned out to honor him in California and in Washington. Long before the former California governor ascended to the presidency, he attracted a dedicated group of activists who worked tirelessly for his insurgent campaign against incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford in 1976 and for his successful White House bids in 1980 and 1984.
Frank Donatelli was a young operative in those early campaigns and later served as political director in the Reagan White House. He says it was easy to see why so many conservatives flocked to Reagan nearly 40 years ago.
“The country was headed in a fundamentally wrong direction in the 1970s. The economy was stagnating and we were on the defensive all around the world to Soviet communism. We needed somebody strong, somebody with a vision to reverse these trends. Reagan stood out as someone who had very strong beliefs, but more importantly, somebody that could actually implement those beliefs in a coherent program,” said Donatelli, who says the difference after eight years of reagan was obvious to most people.
“In the Reagan years, we saw a disastrous economy transformed into the fastest-growing economy that we’ve had in a long time, 18 million new jobs. On the foreign policy front, we began the process that ultimately saw the demise of the Soviet Union and international communism,” said Donatelli.
While the Reagan administration witnesses many fierce partisan battles on both foreign and domestic issues, today Democrats rarely invoke Reagan except to point out issues where they think his statements help their current positions. Donatelli thinks this stems from multiple motivations, some honorable and others less so.
“There is a segment of the Democratic Party that has honestly looked at the Reagan years and said his record was pretty good and the country was better off eight years after he was elected. Then there’s the other part of the party, like the current president, who quotes Reagan when it’s convenient for him. In other words, he’ll find these tiny little areas where he and Reagan seemingly agree and he uses that just to attack the rest of the Republican Party,” said Donatelli.
The vast majority of the time, according to Donatelli, Obama’s invocation of Reagan comes in a grossly misleading way.
“The classic example was him citing Reagan’s support for a 28 percent capital gains tax, which is what is in his budget. Of course, what he doesn’t point out is that Reagan favored 28 percent for all income and Obama’s now over 40 percent and trying to go even higher. So it’s very selective quotations on the president’s part,” said Donatelli.
For Republicans, Reagan still dominates policy debates and his legacy can be seen in every presidential race as multiple candidates jockey to claim the mantle of Reagan.
“They say nothing succeeds like success. The Lombardi Trophy is named for the man who won the first two Super Bowls, so politicians will always look for successful models to emulate,” said Donatelli.
These days, Republican factions often argue over where Reagan would fall along the GOP spectrum. Moderate sometimes assert Reagan wouldn’t even have a home in today’s party because it’s moved so far to the right. Conservatives point out Reagan challenged a moderate president of his own party and would among those standing on principle vs. taking the route of political expedience. Donatelli says they’re both right and they’re both wrong.
“Reagan was always a conservative and took conservative positions and tried to move the political spectrum to the right. That being said, he was not on a fool’s errand. He was always somebody practical enough to understand the importance of governing. So I don’t think you’d ever see him go over the side of the cliff. I think you’s always see him look to make the best deal possible,” said Donatelli.
“I think that’s something that we seem to be missing now. There’s a feeling that government just doesn’t work and so many of our institutions are broken. I don’t think that was the case when Reagan was president. I think the public is looking for somebody that can somebody that begin to repair some of our big institutions,” he said.
Donatelli says there are ultimately two versions of a president’s legacy. When it comes to the voters, he says the verdict is obvious.
“Here we are all these years later and I think the country has concluded that the eight years of Reagan’s presidency were an unqualified success,” said Donatelli.
As for history’s judgment, Donatelli says that tends to ebb and flow over time. He says when Bill Clinton was elected in 1992, Reagan was not viewed all that favorably but his reputation has been greatly burnished over time. In the long run, he believes the towering achievements of the Reagan years will look very good over the test of time.
“Everybody’s legacy goes up and down. However, I do think that the idea of 18 million new jobs and the end of Soviet communism and totalitarianism is something that will survive the ages and that the president’s legacy will continue to be very strong,” said Donatelli.
Three Martini Lunch 2/6/15
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review applaud Tom Brokaw for reportedly finding the Brian Williams lie unacceptable and worthy of his ouster. They also slam President Obama for trying to make a moral equivalence between the atrocities of ISIS and the crusades, the inquisitions, slavery and segregation. And they groan as the Obama administration rolls out the new foreign policy strategy of “strategic patience.”
Obama wants to ‘Tax More Just to Spend More’
House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Tom Price (R-Georgia) says President Obama’s budget is simply more taxes to pay for even more spending and he says congressional Republicans will take a much more responsible approach to cutting spending and improving the nation’s fiscal health.
On Monday, Obama unveiled his $3.99 trillion budget for Fiscal Year 2016. It calls for higher taxes on investors and more fees on large banks in order to pay for “free” community college for students and tax credits for families with two working parents to pay for day care. It also makes major infrastructure spending a priority. Deficits only get bigger in Obama’s ten-year projection. If his budget were adopted in full, well over eight trillion dollars would be added to the national debt over the next decade.
Chairman Price says Obama is doing the same thing year after year and expecting different results.
“The president wants to tax more just to spend more. That’s the kind of policy that doesn’t get us a growing economy,” said Price.
“His proposal never balances, ever. (It) never ever balances. It’s more taxes, more spending, more borrowing. Remember what that means to each and every American. Every single dollar that’s taken for taxes or every single dollar that’s borrowed is a dollar that can’t be used to pay for an education for a child, to buy a house, to buy a car, to pay rent. to pay a mortgage. All the things that the American people are so desirous of doing are harmed by what the president’s proposal is. We think there’s a better way,” said Price.
For starters, Price says Congress will have a united front in the budget process after years of partisan clashes and some years of Democrats simply failing to produce a budget.
“It will be a budget that will get to balance, that will lay out that path for solving and strengthening and securing the Medicare and Medicaid programs and the health and retirement programs for our country. We’ll lay the policies in place that would provide for pro-growth activity in our economy, whether it’s tax reform or energy policy,” said Price.
The Obama budget calls for an end to spending caps mandated by sequestration, calling for seven percent increases in defense and discretionary spending. On Monday, Obama said the additional spending was vital to national security and the care of veterans and he slammed the existing caps as “mindless austerity.”
Price says that’s some interesting revisionist history.
“It’s curious because this ‘mindless austerity’ was actually his idea. The sequester was the president’s idea and it’s one of the few things where Republicans and Democrats have agreed with each other over the past four years on how to begin to control spending,” said Price.
The chairman says House Republicans will probably issue their budget late next month. He believes they will likely propose a framework that would lead to a balanced budget within ten years. So how will GOP budget leaders begin to chisel away at our deficits? Step one, according to Price. is to pass spending bills in a responsible way.
“It’s a significant amount of money that can be saved by doing appropriations bills through regular order, which means that the committees in the House and the Senate deal with them individually and they come to the floor of the House and the Senate individually as well,” he said.
“It’s not just the money that can be saved here for the federal government. It’s also all the kinds of regulatory schemes that have been put in place by this administration can be addressed in that way to limit what the EPA is doing, to limit what the National Labor Relations Board is doing to harm job creation. We can do those kinds of things through the appropriations process in a way that’s virtually impossible to do in any other way,” said Price.
Price expects little common ground between the parties, but he does believe Republicans and President Obama could pursue some common priorities if both sides are so inclined.
“I think there can be progress. The president has recognized that the level of taxation at the business level is harming job creation and is harming American businesses. We hope there’s common ground there. The president has suggested that there’s some reform that he might be open to on the international tax side so we can create more jobs and have more resources for research and development and growing our economy,” said Price.
Before the appropriations battles begin over Fiscal Year 2016, Congress is still mired in the fight over funding the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from the end of February through September. The House approved a bill that does not include funding for Obama’s unilateral immigration policy to legalize some five million people in the U.S. unlawfully. Senate Republicans have tried multiple times to advance that bill but have come nowhere near the 60 votes needed to clear procedural hurdles.
Price says the best way to fund homeland security efforts while stopping what Republicans consider an unconstitutional power grab is to keep the heat on Democrats at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
“If they pass the bill that we passed through the House that would hold the president to account on his unilateral action then that would be wonderful. We would move to the president’s desk and then the American people can see exactly who’s standing in the way of appropriate reform of our immigration system,” said Price.