Why “reset” is a superficial, even puerile, idea…. Team Obama has viewed Russia through the faux lens of “reset”: So when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton greeted Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Geneva Friday before sitting down to their working dinner, she was all smiles when she presented him a small green box with a ribbon. Lavrov opened it Read More ›
Begin with one of the most famous (to some, infamous) quotations from a generation ago: California Republican Senator S. I. Hayakawa (served 1977-83) said during the election preceding the 1977 signing of the Panama Canal Treaty, “We should keep the Panama Canal. After all, we stole it fair and square.” Yet in 1978 the senator would help shepherd the treaty Read More ›
Tsar Vlad the Bad may have more in mind…. Ukraine’s Ill Wind. Begin with President Obama’s flaccid remarks re Ukraine, ISO common ground with Vladimir Putin, delivered yesterday, announcing sanctions so weak the WaPo editors ridiculed them–“…we’ll know that the president’s calibrations are adequate when they cause Russia’s markets to plunge rather than rally.” They led Russia’s deputy PM to Read More ›
Eastern Ukraine is now a Russian lake…. Latest News. Crimea’s referendum favored reunion with Russia, final Russian “count” at 97 percent for, but the choices were rigged, in a display of the 19th-century cynical geopolitics SecState John Kerry thinks obsolete. In West Ukraine, people are scared of Moscow but also angry at the West for its tepid response to Russia’s Read More ›
No, not the terrorism; it’s NBC’s propaganda…. At NRO ace reporter John Fund collects depressing examples of NBC toadying up to Russia & Vladimir Putin. NBC’s contemptible conduct evokes not the terrorism that irremediably scarred the 1972 Munich Games, but instead another shameful episode, which Fund cites: British pre-WW-II prime minister Neville Chamberlain’s infamous appeasement of Adolf Hitler upon their Read More ›
Bravest in battles, whether at war or at peace…. A giant passes on, who looms especially large compared to the pygmy who sits in the White House. Readings well worth it: Times of Israel obituary: Israel’s indomitable protector. How Sharon narrowly escaped near-certain death in the 1948 war. Elliott Abrams, who worked closely with Sharon for five years, “His Eye Read More ›
United States Senate’s worst year ever ends…. The two-year budget deal passed 64-36 Wednesday (9 GOP senators crossed the aisle to vote for the bill; 3 other GOP senators who voted to cut off debate Tuesday voted against the final bill), given 2-1/2 cheers by policy ace Peter Ferrara, albeit saddled with the odious military pension cuts Democrats insisted upon: Read More ›
Telltale clues to identify ally betrayal….. Here’s how to tell: Conduct secret negotiations with your ally’s mortal enemy, based upon wrongly presumed common interests & hence goals, including back-channel talks going back five years, even one found to be conducting one or another form of war on you & your ally, on a matter viewed as existential by your ally. Read More ›
John Kerry’s interim disaster augurs catastrophe…. Sunday morning’s interim nuclear deal that six Western powers made with Iran’s rulers is a disaster in search of catastrophe–the latter in the form of the planned final deal six months hence. On Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace began his report on the deal having been reached with “While many were sleeping”; it Read More ›
“O” lie? Depends upon the meaning of “good plan”…. What lies at the root of Team Obama’s defense of “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it. Period.”? In essence, Team Obama channels Bill Clinton’s famous line (0:05) during l’affaire Monica, “It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’, is.” Yet one estimate is that Read More ›