Monday, June 15, 2015
From: Gary L. Bauer
Iran Says No Inspections
You are going to hear more about President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran as the June 30th deadline approaches. The rhetoric will be muddled and at times intentionally so. For example, Obama may say one thing while Iran says the exact opposite.
Keep this report handy. Set it aside and re-read it in the weeks ahead.
Under the concessions Obama has already made, Iran doesn’t have to destroy any of its nuclear infrastructure capable of making nuclear weapons. It only has to “unplug” those systems, which, of course, could be plugged back in at any time.
Obama said recently that a deal with Iran “is not based on trust. It is based on unprecedented verification.” But virtually every day the Iranians are saying that there is absolutely no way they will ever permit foreign inspectors on their military bases, which is precisely where the most suspicious activity takes place.
Just yesterday Brig. Gen. Massoud Jazzayeri, deputy chief of staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, said, “We reiterate that the permission will definitely never be issued for any kind of access to [Iranian] military centers.” All signs indicate that Obama will likely cave on inspections too.
As the debate continues, do not be confused by scientific jargon. The fundamental issues are really very simple. As Ronald Reagan once said, “Trust but verify,” when dealing with bad actors.
Obama has already negotiated a bad deal, and we will likely be unable to verify Iran’s compliance with it. That’s just one more reason why this bad deal must be defeated.
Race & Relativism
Have you heard the bizarre news about Rachel Dolezal? Well, I say it is bizarre, but then again, in the age of “Caitlyn Jenner” who am I to judge?
And that’s my point.
Rachel Dolezal was the president of the Spokane, Washington, NAACP chapter. She resigned her position today after news broke last week that Dolezal is white. She has been presenting herself as black for years. She said all her life she has “felt” black. So first we have “transgender” and now we have “transracial.”
After I stopped laughing, I wondered if there were serious lessons to be learned from this story. What immediately came to mind was the triumph of left-wing moral relativism, which has destroyed the concept of normalcy. In fact, everything that is normal is being forced into the closet while every radical idea is praised by leftists who are increasingly incapable of distinguishing right from wrong.
Thanks to the left, we live in an age where every choice is to be celebrated and value judgments are discouraged. Who are we to judge the value of different cultures and civilizations or lifestyles?
If you think it is okay to take the life of an innocent unborn baby, that’s your choice. If you are a man and want to marry another man, that’s okay. It’s your choice. If you don’t like your gender, just pick another one. If you don’t want to be a man anymore, you can be a woman. Wish you were not white? Presto, you’re now a racial minority.
So why not choose your race? Rachel Dolezal chose to identify as a black woman. She must have been pretty good at it, considering her leadership position in the NAACP.
A recent trend among left-wing grievance mongers is to demand that white people “check their privilege.” It seems to me that Ms. Dolezal more than succeeded in that respect.
Yet, she’s was blasted by some leftists. CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill said, “To me, it’s the ultimate exercise in white privilege to say, ‘I’m going to be black for a little while.'” And I thought imitation was the sincerest form of flattery.
Snowden’s Treason
Many on the left and even some on the right continue to praise former CIA contractor Edward Snowden as a whistleblowing hero. My opinion of Snowden has not changed. I believe he is a traitor. Whistleblowers do not run to communist China. Nor do they seek asylum in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Former Representative Buck McKeon, who served as chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, has said that Americans would be “shocked and outraged” if they had any idea just how much information Snowden stole related to our national defense and not just the NSA’s domestic surveillance efforts. “Damage to the military is not the mark of a whistle-blower,” McKeon said.
We may now be learning about the extent of that damage. Yesterday Britain’s Sunday Times reported that the massive stash of secret intelligence data stolen by Snowden has been hacked by Chinese and Russian agents. Is anyone really surprised?
According to the Times story, the disclosure exposed the identities of British and American spies, “forcing MI6 [the British equivalent of the CIA] to pull agents out of live operations in hostile countries.”
An American intelligence official echoed Rep. McKeon’s comments, telling the Sunday Times that “the damage done by Snowden was ‘far greater than what has been admitted.'”
Ready For A ’92 Redo?
Forty-eight hours after Hillary Clinton relaunched her presidential campaign, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush formally declared his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination.
The last time America faced a choice between Bush and Clinton was 1992. Anyone excited about a decades-old redo?
That question may dog both of the presumed party frontrunners. As CNN noted today:
“A 2016 campaign between Bush and Clinton would undoubtedly be clouded by questions about legacy, nepotism and the vitality of a political system seemingly dominated by a pair of powerful families with close ties to wealthy elites in Washington and on Wall Street . . . challenging the maxim that presidential campaigns are about the future rather than the past.”
By the way, a recent poll found that 62% of Americans felt that Jeb Bush “represents the past,” while only 45% said the same of Hillary Clinton.
Here’s another potential concern for Jeb Bush: He has been out of office for so long that he may be weaker in his home state than many pundits realize. According to an analysis of the Florida voter rolls:
“Nearly three-quarters of Florida’s 12.9 million currently registered voters have never even seen Bush’s name on a ballot. . . . By contrast, 92 percent of Floridians who voted when Marco Rubio was last on the ballot, in 2010, are still registered.”
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