Daily Archives: August, 1, 2014

The Council Has Spoken!! This Weeks’ Watcher’s Council Results

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The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast, and the results are in for this week’s Watcher’s Council match up.

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The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast, and the results are in for this week’s Watcher’s Council match up.

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The war between Hamas and Israel in Gaza has been very much in the headlines and recently something occurred that is unprecedented in America’s relationship with the Jewish State. This week’s winner, Joshuapundit’s Obama Betrays Israel In A Last Ditch Effort To Save Hamas is my chronicling of that event and what it means. Here’s a slice:

President Barack Obama took some time off the golf course to call Israeli PM Netanyahu and demand an immediate, unconditional ceasefire in Gaza.In a statement the White House put it this way:

“The President made clear the strategic imperative of instituting an immediate, unconditional humanitarian ceasefire that ends hostilities now and leads to a permanent cessation of hostilities based on the November 2012 ceasefire agreement. The President reaffirmed the United States’ support for Egypt’s initiative, as well as regional and international coordination to end hostilities.”

Horse manure.

What happened is this; Secretary Kerry had originally told the Israelis that any ceasefire would ultimately entail Hamas disarming, but that for now what he was looking for was to implement the Egyptian proposal, which called for a ceasefire but allowed the IDF to stay in position and refused to recognize any of Hamas’ demands, which involved an IDF withdrawal and the opening of the Israeli-Egyptian blockade, put in place to stop Hamas from obtaining heavy weapons from Iran.

Then Kerry tried to bypass the Egyptians and instead came up with a brand new proposal using Muslim Brotherhood friendly Qatar, who funds Hamas, and the anti-Semitic Islamist government of Turkey as intermediaries.The trio met in Paris, a city where John Kerry has had experience orchestrating betrayal before.

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That new proposal was very different from what Kerry had told the Israelis only a day or two earlier. As one of my notorious Lil’ Birdies told me directly, it recognized Hamas’ position as the ruler of the Gaza Strip, promised Hamas millions in aid and ‘reconstruction’ money ($47 million from the Obama Administration and $48 million from Qatar alone) and made no demands on Hamas as far as any demilitarization. Their rockets, tunnels and other weaponry would be allowed to remain in place. The IDF would have to withdraw, and the Rafah crossings and the Israeli Egyptian blockade would be lifted. Even worse, the wording of the proposal put Israel and Hamas on the same level, with no difference between the two.

This ridiculous proposal was unanimously rejected by Israel’s security cabinet, even the most dovish members. They were literally shocked by this duplicity.

This was on Friday. The call from Barack Hussein Obama to Binyamin Netanyahu came today.

In his call to Netanyahu, Obama spoke of the need to enact “a sustainable ceasefire that both allows Palestinians in Gaza to lead normal lives and addresses Gaza’s long-term development and economic needs, while strengthening the Palestinian Authority.” He said that, ultimately, “any lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must ensure the disarmament of terrorist groups and the demilitarization of Gaza.”

So in other words, Hamas is to be rewarded, even though they were the aggressors, even though they are a terrorist group, even after the entire world has seen where that money goes. And the ‘Palestinian Authority’ which Hamas is now part of? That has to strengthened. Maybe, with some Obama funded ‘strengthening,’ Hamas and their Fatah partners might have better luck next time attacking Israel and killing Jews…

The story the White House is putting out now, of course, is that the leaked proposal was ‘just a draft’, accompanied by the usual verbiage by this president of his commitment to Israel’s security. Virtually no one in Israel believes that now.

Among other things, both Hamas leader Khalid Masha’al and Hamas PM Ismail Haniyeh have already said that demilitarization will not happen, and both the president and John Kerry knew it. That why the so called ‘draft’ made no mention of it.In fact Hamas has already used a nice chunk of its ‘humanitarian aid’ money to purchase replacements for its missile arsenal from North Korea, which are en route.That’s something else the president and our Secretary of State had to be aware of too.

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Even worse, Obama is trying to hold the safety of Israel’s population hostage. The Iron Dome missile defense system has been key to limiting Israeli civilian casualties.It was developed by Israel’s Rafael, but as part of the quid pro quo for doing some of the funding as a joint weapons project, the U.S. demanded that while the system itself could be produced by Israel, the missiles themselves would be produced in America, and those are made by Raytheon.

At this point, Israel has used up a significant part of its stocks and had asked America for a resupply. Congress almost unanimously authorized the funds. But then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in a heartless and nasty maneuver that had to come straight from the White House attached it to the $3.7 billion the president wants to fund amnesty for illegal aliens. The Senate Republicans as I write this are attempting to write up a separate bill to bring to the floor, but it’s not certain Harry Reid will even allow it to come to a vote in the event the legislation gets out of committee. And then, even if it passes, it has to go back to the House and be signed by the president, all of which could take a very long time, especially with the president’s 18 day luxury vacay at Martha’s Vineyard coming up.

I obviously didn’t hear the phone call between Netanyahu and Obama, but I would bet my dollar to your dime the subject came up, and that it was made plain to Netanyahu that unless he accedes to Kerry and Obama’s demands and enables Hamas to rebuild, Israel might not get those Iron Dome missiles for awhile.

And of course, there’s almost certainly another motivation for President Obama here. The biggest beneficiary of the current turmoil in Gaza is none other than Iran,because it takes the eyes of the world off the West’s craven caving in on the July 2oth deadline to resolve Iran’s rogue nuclear weapons program. Not only did the Iranians get another four months of ‘negotiations’ while the centrifuges spin, they got appeased for their trouble with a badly needed $2.5 billion bribe in the bargain.

President Obama realizes that like the Saudis, Egypt and the Emirates, Israel was appalled by this appeasement. And he knows that Netanyahu has his eye very much on that situation.In the president’s view, it probably works much better for him if Israel still has to deal with a military threat to the south as well as from Iran’s proxy Hezbollah in the north rather than to see Hamas defeated and Israel perhaps free to think about doing something about the Iranian threat itself.

More at the link

In our non-Council category, the winner was Fred Maroun – What Do Israel’s Critics Really Want? submitted by Simply Jews. Here, an Arab blogger asks and answers the simple and direct question in a simple and direct way. Do read it.

Here are this week’s full results:

Council Winners

Non-Council Winners

See you next week! Don’t forget to tune in on Monday AM for this week’s Watcher’s Forum, as the Council and their invited guests take apart one of the provocative issues of the day and weigh in…don’t you dare miss it. And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us Twitter..’cause we’re cool like that!

The Pursuit of Happiness And The Kingdom of God

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Guest Post written by George Radanovich, Member of Congress 1995-2011:

In a recent column, opinion writer Eugene Robinson argued that a partisan “spirit of revenge” has created dysfunction and threatens the free nation of the United States. “Republicans have decided not to collaborate with President Obama in fulfilling the most basic obligations of government, preferring to let “disorders and miseries” fester rather than address them.” He goes on to state that, in American history, compromise and a spirit of shared enterprise has always been the norm, with the exception of slavery and the Civil War, and today we face no question of such magnitude.

Certainly we don’t face a bloody, internal conflagration ending in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, but we do face a question of a magnitude that threatens our happiness at home and our stature as the beacon to the freedom seeking world.

Our freedom to pursue happiness through the strong institutions of our culture is threatened by the faux happiness delivered by the hand of government through socialistic programs. These two avenues of pursuit are mutually exclusive.

There are surprisingly few ways to pursue happiness in this world; worshiping God, loving our neighbor as ourselves, building a family and working. Each pursuit must be supported by a strong institution. Allow the institution of one pursuit to falter and a nation’s pursuit of freedom is compromised.

One such faltering institution, a victim in our pursuit of socialism, is the American family. Today, 40% of American children will go to sleep tonight with only one parent in the home. Children from broken families are two to three times more likely to be victims of child and sexual abuses, do drugs, experience educational, health, emotional and behavior problems, become teen parents and engage in criminal behavior. The Fatherless Generation website (fatherlessgeneration.wordpress.com) provides information showing that the news just gets worse.

When these children grow up, the loss of economic potential and increased government social service costs associated with broken lives increases the tax burden to the point that 66% of the goodwill in this country is administered by government, degrading yet another institution vital to the pursuit of happiness, loving our neighbor as our self.

Parental neglect at crucial moments of a child’s life is what hinders the pursuit of happiness in the United States. Alarm at the explosive costs of government due to the disintegration of the family, particularly the costs associated with primary education, law enforcement and incarceration, produces the acrimony and dysfunction we see today in Washington DC. It is often talked about but never recognized as both the common denominator in explosive government costs and the starting point in the reform of our culture.

The West, or western civilization, is often referred to as the free world, a term coined during WWII to draw a line of distinction between fascism and Axis powers, and later in the Cold War to draw a line of distinction between capitalism and communism. The United States is considered to be the leader of nations in the free world and the president of the United States is often referred to as the leader of the Free World.

The Freedom in the World Report, produced by Freedom House, a non-governmental organization, rates the 195 countries of the world as free, partly free and not free. In 2014, the report finds that 88 countries are free, 48 countries are partly free and 59 countries are not free.

Exceptional nations install governments that guarantee the free pursuit of happiness and free cultures build strong institutions to support the very few and simple ways to pursue happiness.

In his book, The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg explained how Martin Luther King cast the civil rights movement in a “new and different light…” King said the pursuit of civil rights was part of God’s plan; the same destiny that had ended British colonialism in India and slavery in the United States, and that had caused Christ to die on the cross so that he could take away our sins. It was the newest stage in a movement that had started centuries earlier. And as such, this new light required new responses, different strategies and behaviors.” King provided a new approach.

In the 1960’s, civil rights was the new stage of an age old movement and addressing the fatherless child is the newest stage in that movement today. Addressing it will require new, culture driven responses and different strategies and behaviors. This dysfunction in Washington DC continues because our leaders are blind to this reality.

Leaders of the free world, particularly in the United States, should pay attention to the simple truth that strong institutions must exist to support the worship of God, the love of our neighbor, the building of families and work. Knowing this, and responding by finding new responses, strategies and behaviors, is the first step to ending the nauseating partisanship in Washington DC and expanding freedom. This new light holds the key to building the Kingdom of God, a world of free nations.

Former California Congressman George Radanovich served 16 years in the U.S. House of Representatives until his 2010 retirement. He recently established The Restore California Foundation  He also published “The New World Order is the Old World Order.”

Kansas City based author and journalist Jack Cashill was on the same train of thought this week  following a local news story that went nationwide due to the comic irony of the headline: “Nonviolence rally marred by multiple fights.”

But the story in reality is more tragic than comical, as Cashill points out in his latest piece,  Barack Obama’s most tragic failure:

According to the Star, the “multiple fights” caused the suspension of an event, called “Your Life Counts,” that was staged “to celebrate survival in a city plagued by crime.”

As to the reasons for that plague, no one is publicly allowed to discuss them. New Jersey News 12 reporter Sean Bergin learned this the hard way two weeks ago.

After Lawrence Campbell executed rookie Jersey City cop Melvin Santiago, Campbell was killed in the ensuing shootout. This inspired Campbell’s friends to build a neighborhood shrine in his honor and inspired Bergin to speak out.

“The underlying cause of all of this, of course: young black men growing up without fathers,” said Bergin. “Unfortunately, no one in the news media has the courage to touch that subject.”

News 12 certainly did not. Its executives immediately suspended Bergin, slashed his pay to $300 a week and limited him to light features, forcing him to quit.

If there was any one person in America who had the potential to address this issue, it was Barack Obama. Many Americans voted for him for no other reason.

Linked by Maggie’s Farm, thanks!